Animorphs Reboot - 02: The Rescue
by AnimorphsFanFic
Summary: This continues by ongoing reboot series.
1. Chapter 1

**Prologue**

* * *

My name is Rachel Travis.

God, this is so stupid. Jake said he found some catharsis in writing, but I just don't know what I'm supposed to do here.

Nothing makes sense anymore. I feel so, I don't know… empty, I guess.

I thought I was stronger than this. I can tell you that much. A few weeks ago, I'd had my problems, the typical frustrations of a sixteen-year-old girl, family drama, but I could handle all that. I could put up with my sisters, I could talk to my friends when I wanted to, and I had plans for life beyond the summer. I don't think any of those plans are still on the table.

Two weeks ago, an alien crashed in the woods outside Santa Cruz. Think I'm crazy if you want. I won't blame you. For all the science fiction, all the games, comics, and movies, I didn't really believe in the possibility of life out there. I thought UFOs were the stuff of conspiracy theorists and nutjobs.

But Elfangor had been real. He didn't come in peace, either. He was an Andalite soldier, a general, and he had been shot out of the sky by the Yeerks.

Elfangor had changed all of us, and in more ways than one. He told us about the Yeerk invasion, an insidious conspiracy of alien brain slugs. He gave us the morphing ability to help him fight them. He died fighting them.

I still miss him. It seems weird to me. None of us really knew him that well. Still, I remember waking up the day afterward. I had woken up crying. I hadn't done that since I was little, since I'd stopped believing in the monsters under the bed.

Monsters don't live under beds, though. They live under the San Jose international airport.

That's where Elfangor died. It's where I almost died.

My issues were different from the others. All of us missed Elfangor. But I had gotten hurt. And I hadn't told any of them exactly how close I'd been to going out that night. I'd been able to demorph, using the genetic reset of Andalite technology to heal. It was a nice feature of morphing that anything that didn't kill you outright was actually survivable. But it didn't fix everything. It's like a car crash where no one gets hurt. The lack of injury doesn't abolish the experience. As much as I was mourning Elfangor, I was nursing some serious aftershock on top of it.

I still dream about it. That's a new level of fun. A recurring nightmare where I'm hit with a Dracon blast. The first night, it was just a memory. I remembered feeling weightless as Tobias carried me away from harm. Every night after, though, the fear would bleed into my subconscious and the events changed. There was the version where they left me behind. I watched them recede into the distance as I slowly exsanguinated on the cold floor. Last night, I dreamt I got up for school with a softball-sized hole through my stomach, only to snap out of bed, breathless and covered in sweat.

Every night for a week had been some variation of that.

I was coping in easily the worst way possible. Simply put, I wasn't. I don't know what was wrong with me or what part of me was broken, but all of it was just stuck there. Like I had taken all my emotions and precariously balanced them on a shelf and walked away.

I have some experience with repressed emotion. Enough to know that it usually doesn't end well.

Unlike the others, though, I have younger siblings. Jordan was ten, and Sara was seven. They were a handful at times and more often than not, they were my responsibility. Because of Jordie and Sara, I wasn't able to really feel my feelings like I wanted.

Hours after Elfangor had died, I was up, getting dressed, doing Jordie's hair, helping mom get ready. I had put on my happy face at the zero hour. And I couldn't take it off. I was afraid if I slipped, if the mask fell, then I would never get it back on. I would devolve into a mess of tears and for right now, the nightmares were preferable to vulnerability.

It was easy to keep my parents oblivious. And if any of my friends or teachers noticed a change in my mood the last week of school, they'd probably chalk it up to end-of-year stress. It was harder to fake it in front of Jordie and Sara, but my sisters knew nothing at all. They didn't know I was stapled in some kind of stagnant grief or silent post-traumatic stuff. And if I had my way, they never would. I wouldn't do that to them for anything in the world.

In fact, as far as they knew, I was the best big sister in the world, because I was taking them to the beach. Yesterday had been the last day of school and we were wasting no time on summer vacation. That's what they thought, anyway.

Summer on the beaches of Santa Cruz at sixteen. It should have been one of the best times of my life. At any rate, better or worse, it was easily going to be the most memorable summer of my life.

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

* * *

It was Friday.

Tonight, it would be two weeks since we had met Elfangor. And this morning had been one week since he'd been killed in the Yeerk pool.

I heard the familiar honk of my cousin's SUV outside, and I felt my pulse quicken. My sisters bolted out the door, each carrying a backpack. Living on a beach, we keep ready bags in the closet. Sandcastle shovels, goggles, sunscreen, cover-ups, and so on. Jordan and Sara plowed into Jake, who was just quick enough to grab Sara before she bowled him over. Jake is built solid. He picked Sara up like she was no more than a doll. I saw him smile before putting her down and shuttling her off toward the SUV. Cassie was at the wheel, waiting. Jake helped me carry the cooler out.

We were meeting at the beach by the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, but hitting up rides and such wouldn't have let us talk much, so we were hoping to stick to the sand. There were only so many places we could go with my little sisters. The other day after school, I'd gone with Jake and Cassie. Gone with is misleading. I basically dragged them with me and my sisters, just to try to put them together for a bit.

That had been fun… she says sarcastically.

We were all processing a loss, but Jake and Cassie... I'm not even sure there's a word for their situation. Within days of the two of them deciding to try the boyfriend-girlfriend thing, our alien friend whom we'd been hiding in the woods died a horrific death as we ran for our lives.

I hadn't found a Hallmark card for that yet.

That kinda sucks the romance right out of everything. I couldn't blame them for being awkward company, but they each had a distance they couldn't bridge yet. I guess they needed time.

I didn't have any firsthand experience with death before last week. Jake had gone through some stuff after Marco lost his mother, so he at least had secondhand experience. I didn't even have that much.

And I had zero relationship experience myself. I have never had a boyfriend. Not to say I didn't have offers. I could feign modesty, but I'm not going to waste anyone's time or insult anyone's intelligence. I'm a very pretty girl. When you grow up pretty, people make sure you know. Random strangers tell me I should be a model. Honestly, it makes me tired. I know they mean it as a compliment, and nine out of ten, it's a day-brightener, but at the end of the day, I find it a little stupid how much attention I get. I'm immediately valued because of how I look. No, not because I'm smart, not because of my talents, but because people think I'm hot. Younger than sixteen, I got attention from older boys. Too much attention. And for no substantive reason.

I wasn't really what you'd call girlfriend material, so the guys that were the most interested were the kind of guys that saw me as a conquest. I knew if I went out with any of the jocks that asked me that I'd all too quickly have the reputation as the school slut. Probably by the next day. They could call me a cocktease all they wanted - and yes, I knew what they said about me - but that wasn't really helping to soften my attitude towards dating.

And that was only maybe half the reason I didn't want to date.

I had seen Tobias only a few times in passing at school. Of the five of us, Tobias seemed to be taking it the best. He wasn't putting on a happy face or anything, like I was doing. It just seemed like he made a rapid peace with it. He grew up hard. Harder than I had with my comfortable, upper-middle class lifestyle. He just readily accepted that sometimes terrible things happened. In some ways, I think Tobias actually missed Elfangor more than any of us.

And this was going to be the first time I had really seen Marco in six days. I'd only seen him a few times in passing the last few days at school, and he'd made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with us or anything even remotely alien. He was a sullen wreck, honestly. I think it's worth noting that Marco and Tobias were the only two among us to ever suffer a loss, and they were having polar opposite reactions to a second.

I was shocked when Jake made an unexpected turn on a very familiar street. It was news to me, but apparently we were taking Melissa with us. I felt anxious suddenly. Melissa Chapman is the daughter of our high school principal, who also happens to be the only human-Controller we know about. When we'd gone into the massive underground complex of the Yeerk pool, Jake had morphed her father. He had been implicated, and while apparently nothing came out of it, I hadn't really talked to Melissa much in the last week.

But when she got in the car, I found myself smiling. I'd missed her more than I'd realized. She was adorable, a natural redhead, and she looked like Ariel in purple seashell bikini top and fishnet cover-up that didn't do much covering. I knew she had the matching teal fish-scale mermaid bottom under her shorts. She was a walking Rule 34, and I honestly have no idea if she was too naïve to know that or if she did and was just fine with it.

We were at the beach in minutes, and I helped my sisters get their things out of the vehicle. By the time I had them settled and ready, Jake had already gotten both coolers. His own cooler had wheels, and Cassie had no problem pulling it, so Jake carried mine as I gathered the two umbrellas and the canvas tote bag I'd put in the trunk. Sodas, sandwiches, fresh fruit, it wasn't a bad way to spend the day. I kept telling myself that, hoping it would actually sink in.

Keeping my sisters together while we walked along the hot sand was a challenge, but we found a place and I started setting up. I had the beach blankets set in moments, and while Jake and Cassie set up the umbrellas to give us some much-appreciated shade, I started slathering Sara with SPF 30. Jordan was getting help from Melissa.

Finally, we were all set. My sisters were playing in the surf almost as soon as I was done with the sunscreen. Melissa shucked out of her stonewashed denim shorts, kicked off her flip flops and took after them. I sat down on the towel, feeling the warmth of the sand beneath soak through the fabric, and put on my own sunscreen. I put on my favorite beach hat and sunglasses and lay down for a moment.

I had my own bikini on under my sundress. I thought about following The Little Mermaid into the ocean, but for the moment, I was content to just let the sun fall on me.

When I finally looked up a few minutes later, Jake and Cassie were sitting together in the shade of a beach umbrella, Cassie laying her head on Jake's shoulder. They weren't talking. Didn't need to. All they needed was to feel the other close. Those were the only moments of dating I really looked forward to, but getting that kind of mutual respect from a guy isn't easy.

As much as I hated interrupting them, this wasn't supposed to be just fun in the sun. We had business to attend to.

"Hey," I said. "How are you guys?"

"Doing a little better," Cassie said. "Still hurts, still scared, but it's not as bad."

I nodded, pretended I was making similar progress. I'd been on autopilot for days, and the amount of emotion I had choked down was probably bordering on catastrophic, but I just had no idea how to let it go. And I wasn't sure talking to the others would hurt their own processes.

"Any sign of Marco or Tobias?" I asked.

Jake shook his head. "They said they'd be here, but beyond that, I've got no clue."

Great. Not like the beach at Santa Cruz was popular in June.

I stood up and surveyed the beach but it was too crowded to really see much. So that left wandering around looking or waiting for Marco and Tobias. And I was not the girl that would sit around and wait if there was a direct option.

And actually, I found Tobias without much trouble. As I made my way along the shore, occasionally looking over my shoulder at Melissa and my sisters, I noticed a throng of people. They were all trying to get a look at something, and as I got closer, I saw what they watching. Tobias had made a giant sand sculpture of an octopus. It was easily twenty feet across from one tentacle to the other, and it must have taken him hours. The texture he got in the sand was incredible, and watching him work on it, I almost forgot why I was looking for him.

Tobias saw me. His green eyes flashed in the bright blue sky, and he smiled at me. He has a sad smile, Tobias. Like he knows smiles are fleeting things, things that fade away too quickly. He shook sand from his shaggy, dark-blond hair. Tobias doesn't get much sun and it showed. He was likely going to have a sunburn tomorrow unless he morphed out of the sun damage. He was wearing worn-out khaki cargo shorts and a faded too-large-for-him t-shirt that was probably green once but now was almost grey. Every item of clothing Tobias owned was old or ill-fitting. He grew up on thrift stores.

"Hey, Rachel," he said, making his way around his sculpture. The crowd of gawkers moved somewhat as they all tried to move around the octopus. More than half of them had phones out. But Tobias never looked back. Once he got to me, all thoughts of the sculpture behind him seemed to vanish. "C'mon, I'll take you to Marco. Jake and Cassie here?"

"Yeah," I said, gesturing toward the others. "Melissa is playing with my sisters."

He didn't seem fazed by that. "Cool. Jake said she might be here."

"Wait, Jake told you he was bringing Melissa?"

"Yeah, didn't you know?"

I shook my head. I wasn't mad, but I felt...used? Was that too strong a word? It wasn't a pleasant emotion.

Marco had been surfing. We found him about another fifty yards up the beach. He didn't have a cooler or anything with him, just a duffle bag with his surf gear and some snorkeling stuff. I winced, remembering his mom had been the one to teach him what he knew of free-diving. Marco usually pissed me off. He was sarcastic more often than not, something of a brainiac that made things look too easy, and he almost refused to take much seriously. But, lately, he was taking everything seriously. Like his whole personality had done a one-eighty reversal. It scared me how much I missed him being an ass.

Marco has a bronze Latino complexion and he has something of a weird haircut, his black hair pulled into a ponytail but with the sides shaved. Sand dusted his black and orange wetsuit. He saw me and Tobias and with no expression whatsoever, he nodded.

It took Marco a few minutes to get his shit together, and the three of us walked back toward Jake and Cassie. They were gone when we got there. I looked into the water and saw Jake carrying Cassie into the spray, the seafoam green of her one-piece swimsuit bright against the warm brown of her skin. Jake wasn't as pale as Tobias, and he had some kind of averageness that made him blend into crowds. He was six foot, so tall but not terribly tall. He was muscular-ish, but not weightlifter or linebacker big. He was small for the football team when he played junior varsity. Brown hair, brown eyes, plain black swim trunks, it was like Jake tried not to stand out sometimes.

He dropped Cassie playfully into the ocean and she shot up in a splash, giggling, splashing him back. My sisters attacked Jake, but they weren't enough to pull him down. But Melissa gave him a shove and my cousin and sisters went under the water in a huge splash.

I peeled off the dress I'd worn over my bikini and tossed it into my bag along with my hat and shades. I was in the water without thinking, and that's what I needed. I didn't need to worry about why all of us were there. I didn't need to concern myself with anything right then but being a teenager.

Suddenly, I was off the ground, and I turned and saw Tobias under me. He wasn't as solid as Jake, but there's kind of wiry strength to Tobias. I'm not a big girl, but I am about a buck thirty, so I was surprised he could pick me up so easily. I saw Marco launch into the water in a Baywatch dive. He was headed straight for Melissa, but before I could warn her, Tobias tossed me. Cool Pacific water engulfed me, and I shut my eyes against the saltwater.

I came up and shoved Tobias backwards, a look of surprise crawled over his face as he realized he wasn't on balance and fell back into the water himself.

We played in the water for more than an hour. With everything that had happened in the last two weeks, it was easy for us to forget we were still just kids. I let go of all of it. I knew I'd have to pick it up again and shoulder hurts I couldn't bear to look at, but fuck that noise. I was having fun with friends and family, and I could feel miserable later.

All of us collapsed on the sand and towels some time later. Jake and I divvied out the drinks and sandwiches. Tobias drained a whole bottle of water in one long pull and I wondered if he hadn't been out here all day in the sun with no food or water. There were fountains here and there, and he had a Boardwalk pass thanks to Jake, but I suddenly wished I'd packed more food.

"So, did you put in an application?" Marco asked suddenly. I looked up, but he was talking to Melissa.

"Yeah," she said. "I put one in Monday, but haven't heard back yet. Probably a lot of applicants."

Marco nodded. "All day showings all through summer. Jake and I have work later tonight." Jake and Marco work at the Regal 9 Cinema on Pacific Avenue. This whole thing started when Cassie and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean on Jake's employee tickets.

"You guys are moving to full time, right?" Cassie asked.

"Not quite," Jake answered "I have normal hours scheduled for this week, and at least one extra shift for next week," Jake answered. "Should be a nice bump in take-home pay, but not full time."

"I can't believe you have to deal with taxes already," Melissa said. "I'd love to be doing something."

I shrugged. "You're welcome to hang out with me and my sisters. I'll split my big sister stipend with you."

Both my parents had work, obviously. My mom is a lawyer and my dad works for a marketing firm. Mom has long days, and dad has to travel a lot. It's good money. We have a good home, nice clothes, we've always gotten what we needed. New toys, new shoes. I was a spoiled rich kid really. Maybe not that rich. Not like I got a car for my sweet sixteen, or like we had a nanny or housekeeper. I didn't own Prada or anything. My parents definitely worked for what they gave us, but we were unquestionably in the upper middle class. As I've gotten older, though, I really wish that they'd just been home more than working so much.

At any rate, Jordan and Sara were still young enough to need childcare. And I'd basically been their third parent since I was thirteen. That was when Mom had gotten a promotion and I'd overheard what they were looking to have to spend for childcare. I ended up taking them up on an offer of ten dollars a day to take care of my sisters before and after school, and twenty bucks a day for weekends. They didn't tell me there's not a nanny in the county that would work for less than a hundred per week. But at thirteen, making more than three hundred a month seemed like a dream. And for the first two years, it really was. But in the last year or so, I felt like I'd transitioned from helping my parents with childcare to lynchpinning the whole family. Everything worked only so long as I didn't make any other plans. It's not like I wanted to date, but like Melissa, I had been considering finding a summer job.

Melissa considered my offer. "Hmm, I'll think about it."

The plus of working with my sisters is that it was actually fairly easy. Boardwalk, beach, library, park, movies, and oh so much My Little Pony . They had chores, laundry, we cleaned the house together, and occasionally when Jake was free or mom let me borrow the car, we'd go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium or The Gardens. But when you're essentially paid to have fun or watch TV, the pay per hour is terrible. At minimum wage, Melissa would make more than me in four or five hours. Even part-time, she'd be further ahead to take anything besides my job. There were days I'd much rather flip burgers for eight hours than watch Kung Fu Panda one more time.

"Speaking of cash," Marco said, "who wants ice cream?" He inclined his head toward a vendor cart making rounds. He dug his wallet out of his surf bag. Melissa rolled her eyes. "You want a popsicle or something?" he asked, remembering she didn't eat dairy.

"Yeah, lemon if they have it."

My sisters followed the boy with ice cream money. Melissa got up too and brushed sand from the ruffled skirt of her bikini bottom. I was left with the other three. Without Elfangor, the five of us are the only ones that know about the Yeerks, and we already knew Marco wanted out. I knew he was really messed up inside. We all were. Cassie had become a little muted, quieter. Sadder. It wasn't like her to be morose.

Jake was already thinking we were done. He had a hollow look on his face all through our last week of school. Guilt. I knew he blamed himself for what happened to Elfangor, but that wasn't it. That was some of it, but not all of it. There was something he wasn't telling us.

But without Marco, it was just us four. Four kids that didn't know what we were doing or should be doing. We didn't even know if we could do anything. And we were alone. As far as we knew, there were no other Andalites on Earth.

Except for one that refused to answer the phone.

I stared at the sapphire blue of the Pacific. I watched the breakers as they rolled white. Seagulls mobbed the sky above, and in the distance, I could see dolphins. Somewhere out there, nearly five hundred miles offshore, the Andalite dome ship had crashed into the ocean. It rested twelve hundred feet below the surface.

And that was our mission now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

* * *

"Anyone have any plans for this," I asked.

Tobias looked surprised that we were starting already, but he just shook his head. But Jake shrugged. "We'll get there. I wanna wait for Marco."

"Why?" I asked. "Not like he's going to help us."

Jake nodded. "If he doesn't want to go with us, I'm not going to push it. But this is gonna take some planning and Marco's smarter than me. Besides, it's not going to take them long to get ice cream."

Marco the advisor. I don't know how someone so off-kilter as Marco could be so goddamn smart, but he was. He told us within minutes of Elfangor landing that we were making a really stupid decision. It hadn't stopped us - or him, for that matter - from helping Elfangor. And that ended in tears. Granted, we weren't shut in a government bunker and interrogated nonstop or quarantined by the CDC like he predicted, but when he outlined a cause-and-effect scenario, it was hard to find weak links in his logic.

I looked at him, the shadow of the old Marco that bought my sisters ice cream cones. He had the same features, but it wasn't the same smile. It was just a lie he wore so no one saw the hurt. I wanted to hate him, to call him a coward, but I couldn't. He said we was out because he couldn't watch anyone else die. And I wasn't brave enough to tell the others I agreed with him.

"You didn't tell me you were inviting Melissa," I said, trying not to sound harsh.

Jake shrugged again. "We can't have Jordan and Sara involved in this," he said. "I didn't know who else to ask."

"Yeah, I get that part," I said, "but why was I the last to know?"

"I thought it best it was a surprise," Cassie said. "Melissa thought you were being distant. She's perceptive like that. And I was worried if we told you about it, you'd say no."

Well, I guess they had me there. Cassie knows people, gets them, understands them, on levels I don't even think really exist. Sometimes it scares me how well she knows me.

Marco and my sisters came back with giant ice cream cones. Sara had chocolate all over her face, dripping down her hand and a few drops had landed on her pink swimsuit. Jordan handed her a napkin, licking the bead of vanilla that was about to drip from her own cone. And sure enough, Melissa had a massive pink snow cone.

"I thought you wanted lemon?" Tobias said.

She nodded. "Mmm… pink lemonade."

It got awkward suddenly. At least it felt like it did. I had no clue what to say, or how to move this along. I grabbed another Dasani from the cooler. I tried to stay away from refined sugars. Not to say I wasn't eyeing those ice creams, but you make sacrifices to stay a size six.

The gap in conversation led to an implosion of plans. With none of the big kids talking or doing much, Jordan made a suggestion. "Can we hit the rides?" she asked.

Ugh. I specifically did not want to go to the Boardwalk. It was most of the reason I'd dragged Jake and Cassie yesterday; so my sisters wouldn't ask today. But before I could tell them no, Jake said yes.

"Sounds like a good idea. Who wants to watch the brats and who wants to carry stuff back to the SUV?"

I gave him a nasty look and started packing up the cooler. Six teens and two kids can go through a lot of sandwiches. Tobias helped with the umbrellas, and Marco, Cassie, and Melissa stayed with my sisters.

"What the hell, Jake?" I asked when we reached his SUV.

He smiled as he looked at me, like my frustration was amusing to him.

" What?" I asked, tired of this.

"Nothing," he said, "Just… I wasn't sure how we were going to get into this. I wasn't planning on trying at the beach so much. But I didn't really expect you to be so eager for it."

I felt myself go red. From the outside, it seemed like I was chomping at the bit for another mission. Really, I just wanted to get things over with. If this was going to be our last mission, I wanted to put it in the rearview as fast as possible.

"Wait," I said. "If we're talking mission plans later, why did we all need to be here today?"

"Oh, that," Tobias said. "We wanted to get everyone together just to cut loose for a bit. It's been…" his Zen faltered then. I could see the darkness in his eyes for just a second. "Been a long, rough week. Thought we needed some time to be kids, reset."

I rolled my eyes as I tossed my sundress on again. "So just eight kids at the beach and Boardwalk, huh? No morphing, no Yeerks, no stranded Andalite?"

Jake nodded. "We'll meet at the Regal later if you want. Or behind Cassie's place if that's easier."

That was the first affirmative thing he'd said all day. It was the first time any of us except Tobias would have to morph. I hadn't done it since I'd demorphed from owl in my bedroom. That had been right after we'd told Aximili that his brother had died.

Suddenly all that enthusiasm for moving forward met resistance. I was going to have to morph again. Well, unless I just happened to go to a movie with Cassie. No, as soon as I thought about it, I dismissed it. Cassie would have to talk to her parents about whether or not she could go, and that would be a complete replay of the night Elfangor crashed. No thank you.

When we caught back up with the others, my sisters were back in their clothes. I always found sundresses to be great for the beach. They were easy enough for my sisters. Cassie and Melissa had their cutoffs back on, and Marco had gone to one of the changing rooms to get out of his surf gear. Jake handed him the SUV key when he came back out.

Marco would catch up to us. As we headed up to the Boardwalk from the beach, Jake and Cassie held hands. Jordan and Sara flanked them. That left me with Melissa. She got some looks in her fishnet shirt and purple seashell top. "Where did you get that cover up, anyway?" I asked, finally letting curiosity get the better of me.

"Oh, this. I made this," she said.

"Really?" I said. "You did a great job with it. So where did you get the Ariel bikini?"

"Hot Topic."

"Oh, I have a hard time seeing you in Hot Topic."

She shrugged. "Hey, I only look innocent."

"Yeah? You have something juicy to tell me?"

She sighed and looked down. "No, I really am that innocent. I never used to be allowed in Spencer's or Hot Topic, and for whatever reason Mom and Dad just stopped caring, so I thought I'd check 'em out."

"You went into Spencer's?"

She blushed furiously. "You didn't tell me they sold sex toys! " she said in an urgent whisper.

I clutched my hands to my face to keep from laughing. " Lissa! " I said. "My sisters are here."

That was how we spent the rest of the day. Eight kids at the Boardwalk, just like Tobias said. That was what Jake meant by a little bit of normal. We needed to remember who we were without Elfangor, not because he didn't have an impact on us, but because losing him didn't destroy who we were. I was Rachel, and I was still the big sister, the best friend. I hadn't lost who I was. There was a part I had, and I'd never get it back, but I think all of us knew then that we'd get through it.

The hours ticked by as they tend to do on summer days. Roller coasters, bumper cars, and Marco - apparently in a generous mood - put up money for my sisters to play the midway games. Jordan got a lucky throw on a dart and won an oversized Dory plush.

Hours later, Jake dropped me off. Marco was the one to grab the cooler as I got the umbrellas again. I knew why my parents hated taking us to the beach. My sisters bolted to the door, and I had to turn and yell at them. "Hey!" I said, "Both of you, showers, now. Sara, use the regular shower. Jordan, mom's bathroom. And save me some hot water, will you?"

Marco shook his head.

"What?"

He smiled sadly. "You're a good big sister," he said.

"They drive me nuts," I said. "I'm getting my tubes tied the second I move out."

I expected Marco to make a face or some comment, but he didn't. "It's been a long time since a woman yelled at me, Rachel."

I mothered my sisters in front of a boy that lost his mother. I winced. I had always seen Marco as a friend by proxy. I knew him through Jake, but we weren't really friends on our own. I'd never hung out at his house, never seen him much more than the kid that hung out with my cousin. Now, for the first time, I wondered how things might have been different if I'd known Marco better before his mom died. Probably wouldn't change much, really. But maybe I would have known what to say to him then.

"I'm sorry," I said, unsure of anything else to say.

"I'll… I'll see you tonight."

"You're coming?"

He nodded then sighed. "I'll be there. Not sure where we're meeting, but I'll be there."

I put the beach stuff in the garage where we usually keep it and dropped the beach towels in the hamper. I'd run them after I got the wet swimsuits out of the bathrooms. I got my own clothes out of my bedroom, and put my phone back on the charger next to my lacrosse trophy. It was nearly five and I'd have to figure out something for dinner. We had enough vegetables in the fridge to make a big salad, and there was chicken that should be thawed.

Jordie got out of our parent's bathroom, unsurprisingly out of the shower before our younger sister. "Should we check on her?" Jordie asked.

"Probably should, but I'm getting my shower first. If she made a mess in there, I'll deal with it then. Go feed the guinea pigs, then sit and watch cartoons or something. Making dinner soon."

If you didn't know already, the shower is a special place for girls. Girls are expected to smell nice, have soft skin, and possess killer hair while being otherwise hairless. That takes a lot of work. And feminist views of bodily autonomy notwithstanding, this is a beach town. I spend a lot of time in swimsuits, dresses, and skirts, so shaving is something I have to do. It takes up time, and if you've ever asked why girls take so long in the bathroom, fuck you.

I wasn't doing all that though. I had yesterday. But I did need to wash the salt and sea from my hair and sometimes I think bikini bottoms are designed specifically to collect sand. I don't need micro-abrasion on my ass, thanks.

Two rounds of conditioner later, I was mopping up the mess Sara had made in the other bathroom. I tossed the soaked bath mat in the wash with the swimsuits, checked on my sisters - they were watching Descendants again - and started chopping vegetables. Jake teased that I didn't know how to cook, but I did. Sorta. I wasn't great at it, though and we went through a ton of microwave meals and frozen dinners. But I could cook chicken well enough. I found out that if you throw chicken strips in a skillet with a little oil and some bread crumbs, they come out almost pan-fried. Chicken strip salad. Pretty good meal following the June sun.

After I was done, I realized I left my phone in my bedroom, so I went back upstairs to grab it. Jake had texted that we were meeting in the woods behind Cassie's. He meant the wooded creek bed in the Moore Creek Preserve that we'd come to consider as Elfangor's place for the few days he'd been on Earth. Only Tobias had been there in the last week. Not even Cassie, who lived maybe half a mile away, had gone back. There was a text from my mom letting me know that she was on her way home as soon as she wrapped up some stuff at the office. I sighed and rolled my eyes. If she got in before eight, I'd delete my Facebook. I guess it was her way of saying she tried to get home, but really I didn't get why she bothered.

I went back downstairs and ate dinner with my sisters, while they finished Descendants. We were more than halfway through another movie - Sara finally felt she was ready to watch the first Pirates of the Caribbean - when my mom got home. I was in the kitchen making popcorn. It was twenty till nine. Typical.

She got her normal "Mommy's home!" reaction and accepted her hugs. She was upstairs within minutes of getting home. Her routine was to get out of her heels and put her hair down for a bit after a long day. That usually manifested in a long soak in the bath. But that meant bedtime rituals were my responsibility.

When the movie was over, I made sure my sisters brushed their teeth and put on their jammies. I read a story to Sara and sent them to their room. I, meanwhile, had towels in the dryer and a few dishes to do.

There was money on the counter in the kitchen. Three fifty-dollar bills. Friday was payday. There was a post-it note:

For all you do for us,

Love, Mom

I sighed, but I put the money in my nightstand upstairs and went back to cleaning up. I hadn't heard from Dad all day, and wasn't likely to either. He was in Denver this weekend, working on some contract or campaign or whatever you call it. Last week, it had been Seattle. His business trips definitely seemed to be coming more frequently.

I think that had an impact on how I was feeling about being the Big Sister. Obviously, the less my parents were home, the more I had to do around the house. And the more my dad traveled, it seemed the more hours Mom chose to work. She worked for the County of Santa Cruz as a prosecutor for the District Attorney's office. And I think Mom dreamed of someday becoming DA herself.

But anyway my sisters were asleep, the kitchen was clean, and mom was in for the night. I went up to my room and wondered what to do. It was barely nine thirty. It would be four hours before Jake and Marco were off work. I debated on watching TV for a bit, but couldn't find the motivation. There wasn't much on that I hadn't already watched off the DVR, and less still that would keep my attention for that long.

Oh hell, just go.

I changed out of my nightgown and into yoga pants and a sports tank. We had only figured out how to morph very tight-fitting clothing. Cassie favored her one-piece swimsuit the handful of times we'd had to morph for Elfangor's missions. The boys seemed fine in boxer briefs, bike shorts, or muscle shirts. I actually thought about Marco's wetsuit. Might not be a bad choice of morphing apparel.

I only had a handful of morphs in my repertoire. Nearly everything I could morph had come from Cassie. Her family ran a wildlife hospital out of their property, and I'd acquired the DNA of a raven, a raccoon, an owl, and a flying squirrel that had been patients there. I could morph a massive seven-hundred-pound grizzly because her mom was a vet at the zoo, so Cassie knew a lot of the employee-only sections. Still, getting the bear DNA hadn't been fun, but not as bad as Jake's experience acquiring a tiger. In fact, the only thing I had acquired on my own had been Melissa's cat. I'd needed it to spy on her father. Fun times.

But the owl was what I needed. We'd started with the raven as one of our first transportation morphs. And during the day, a small mystery of ravens works fine. But at night, the owl is definitely better. Morphing birds in general, though, sucks.

The first change was that my yoga pants absorbed into my legs as the skin from my knees down turned to hard scales. My toenails erupted outward, turning darker and darker as the bones in my foot rearranged. My big toe and second toe on each foot split apart from the others, and as the bones in my ankles shifted, I was no longer able to stand. I fell forward and I moved my hands to break my fall, but I know longer had hands. The fingers had almost completely fuzed and the odd wingtip was barely enough to catch my diminishing weight.

My chest expanded, and no, perverts, not like that. Owls don't have breasts, obviously, and instead, all my chest was muscle and the blade-like keel bone that birds have to anchor the pectorals. My vision suddenly increased like someone had cranked up the zoom on a telephoto lens. The colors in my room muted and the dim lighting within my room became much brighter.

The last thing to form were the feathers. All the hairs of my body became stiff and prickly, like my skin was embedded with millions of cactus needles. The spiny quills then burst into fluffy feathers. I couldn't see the brown tones in the plumage, only shades of white and grey.

I'd shrunk from five-foot, six inches down to maybe a foot and a half. I'd lost more than a hundred and twenty pounds, and I didn't really want to think about how that was possible.

All I wanted was to be somewhere else.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

* * *

I landed in the woods only minutes later. Owls are quick like most birds, but the biggest advantage to flying wasn't sheer speed but how direct you could go from Point A to Point B. No streets, no turns, no detours.

The Moore Creek Preserve is mostly open fields and hills, but there are small creek valleys that are basically small forests. The trees aren't huge, but they're dense groves. Dense enough that even with owl eyes, I didn't see the fire till I was surprisingly close. Elfangor had crashed near one of these valleys, and had chosen to stay here because the leftover energy signature of his ship apparently masked the energy emitted by some of the strange alien stuff he left behind.

One of those things was the Andalite communications array, the device that had allowed Elfangor to call his brother in the downed Dome ship. We knew very little about Aximili and even less about the ship he was in. Elfangor had given us very few details. We knew Aximili was a cadet more than a soldier, and we knew the Dome ship was huge and relatively undamaged, but apparently inoperable. Elfangor had given us a rough idea where the ship had gone down, but that was it.

There wasn't much here save for an old tent borrowed from Cassie's storage room, a crudely-built fire pit made from stones pulled from the creek, and two fallen trees that had somehow been pulled up to serve as benches near the fire.

And sitting by the fire ring, cooking a hot dog on a stick, was Tobias.

‹I was worried I was going to be the first one here,› I said.

Tobias almost dropped his hot dog. "Shit, Rachel, warn a guy."

‹There's a way to warn you without thought-speaking randomly?›

"Yeah, good point," he said, pulling the hot dog from the stick. Thought-speech is non-directional, so Tobias didn't even bother looking around. He kept his eyes on the fire. "There's a duffel bag in the tent if you wanna demorph and change."

I landed on the log opposite the fire pit and demorphed. The process was as unsettling in reverse, but coming out of morph was a lot easier, took less focus. The night became dark again as I lost the night vision, and I welcomed the smell of the fire, the scent of salt on the air.

Little fun fact here: with the exception of a few notable outliers - mostly vultures and the kiwi - birds as a group have no sense of smell. It makes sense when you think about it. Birds rely on eyesight to find food. A scent trail is useless when you're hundreds of feet in the air. Actually, because of that, owls are one of the few things in the wild to regularly eat skunks.

You learn some odd things about animals when you can actually become them.

Tobias didn't look at me even after I was back to human. He put another hot dog on a stick and handed it to me. "Want one?" he asked. "I have marshmallows too."

I shook my head and he held the frank over the fire again. He was still not really looking at me. I'm not so vain that I demand attention or anything, but I was the only one there and he seemed like he was… not ignoring me, but like he had some moment going on with the fire and my presence wasn't enough to break it. I liked that, actually. He was being himself, and he didn't put that aside even when a cute girl showed up.

Marco used to flirt with me. Not really flirting, if you get me. We knew we were never going to date each other. But Marco had made it a thing for years where he'd lay some heavy exaggerated game on me and I'd call him a misogynistic ass and we'd have a laugh. I used to think it was immature. Hell, it still was, but I missed it when it stopped. Dynamics change. That's life.

I didn't really have a dynamic with Tobias. He was quiet most of the time. He listened more than he wanted to talk. I knew he grew up poor and unwanted, and I didn't know how to interact with that. I have my issues with my parents, and maybe they're legit, I don't know. But my family stuff pales compared to the things Tobias has endured. I have never gone hungry in my life. Tobias has. It was hard to see him shirtless, either morphing or at the beach, and think he had grown up with great nutrition. I had never been hit by a parent. My parents barely believed in spanking, and at that, only when we were very little and time out hadn't worked. A last resort. Tobias had known what it felt like to be hit by a guardian. He had the scars of cigarette burns on his arms. He didn't talk about it, and I didn't ask. Maybe I was supposed to ask. A few times, he'd been at school and I'd seen the bruises. I wasn't sure if it was the assholes at school or the human shitstain that was his uncle.

What bothered me most about Tobias was how little these things seemed to bother him. I was pissed just thinking about it. It wasn't right, and it wasn't fair, and he deserved better than that. But Tobias never seemed angry. He never really seemed to care about how fucked up his life was. It just was what it was to him. It didn't seem to occur to Tobias that he didn't deserve this, and that more than anything made me want to scream.

But I didn't.

I never knew what to say to Tobias. But the long minute of silence made me uncomfortable. I looked around, trying to find something to focus on. The camp, and it was hard to find another word for it, had been cleaned up. The miscellaneous Andalite canisters were stacked neatly next to the comm array only Tobias knew how to use. The leaves, pebbles, and detritus of the ground had been meticulously raked away so that only grass and bare earth remained. The fire ring had been shored up with mud and new rocks. A pile of firewood and gathered sticks rested nearby. An old hatchet and a bucket of sand were left next to the pile. The blankets and pillows in the tent were folded, there was a backpack left just inside the open flap. A stack of notebooks lay on top of the folded blankets. And next to Tobias was an old party-sized Igloo cooler.

"Tobias?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, looking at me for the first time since I'd arrived.

"Are- Are you living here?"

Tobias looked embarrassed. He shook his head, though. "No, yes… I don't know, kinda."

"You're kinda living in the woods?"

"I'm not living here, Rachel," he said, a touch more emphatically. "I don't have electricity or any kind of bathroom here, for one. I go back to the apartment a few times a day. I just spend most of my time here."

I thought about that for a minute. "So, what, you went to school the last four days and just came back here?"

He shrugged. "It's either hang out here in peace and quiet or be at the apartment with my uncle. And after that car mysteriously vanished, he's been… twitchy."

"Twitchy?" Among other revelations, we'd found out that Tobias's legal guardian, his uncle, was the owner of a shady auto body shop that dealt in stolen cars on the side. And Tobias had stolen a car in their inventory.

"Honestly, I think he thinks there's a rival shop. Or it was a bait car. He's paranoid, he owes people money, and… I don't know, really. Mostly he just likes to sit and drink, and now he has all this extra shit on his plate. Kinda funny really. Keeps him out of my hair for now."

"Things any better?" I asked, stupidly.

"Depends on your definition. He's been in and out of the apartment at all hours and I'm not worth his time. I've gone from being an unwanted burden to being a non-issue, and I count that as an improvement."

I was about to ask him why he put up with it, why he didn't just report his uncle or get emancipated or any number of options, but I didn't. "Oh, screw it," I said, "toss me the marshmallows."

It was a while later before the next owl descended. Marco and Jake would be the last two to show up, so I knew it had to be Cassie even before she demorphed. She had apparently opted on volleyball shorts and a sports bra instead of her swimsuit. Probably in the laundry, I realized.

"Damn, you're going to make Jake happy," I said.

"Think so?" she said, teasing. "Tobias, duffel?"

"In the tent," he said.

She came out with a pair of shorts and a purple t-shirt. "What?" she asked, noticing that I was staring at her.

"You knew there was a duffel," I said. "Like you knew Tobias was living in your backyard."

"He's not living here, exactly," she said, though she didn't sound very convincing. "But Aximili could call at any time and he kinda volunteered."

"Fair enough. Any luck with that?" I asked.

Tobias shook his head. "He hasn't called back… that I know of, any way. I don't have a user manual for this thing and I have no idea if it has voicemail."

"Have you tried calling him again?" I asked.

"No, Jake said to give him time. I didn't want to bother him, and if I'm being honest, if I was going to call him, I wanted the rest of us here in case he actually answered."

Made sense. "Cassie, what time is it, anyway?"

"It was a little past midnight when I left, maybe ten, fifteen minutes after." She settled next to me, grabbed a stick, and stole the bag of marshmallows from me.

I nodded. Shouldn't be long now, maybe an hour or so. Then Jake and Marco would be here and we would start to find an answer for the biggest question Elfangor's death had left us: Where do we go from here?

The closer we got to it, the more the anxiety pressed in on me. I was scared, and I didn't like it. Yeah, I know, no one likes being scared, but it had been a long time since I'd felt this far out of my element. Spying on my friend's dad, that made me feel skeevy, but it was doable. It's not like I wouldn't have wanted to hang out with Melissa anyway.

Going to the Yeerk pool, that had been something else, and I'd seen it as an endgame at the time. Hit the pool, hurt the bad guys. Elfangor told us before we got there that nothing we did would really stop them. But we knew more Andalites were on the way. But we're talking astronomical distances here, and even with warp drive or whatever, it was going to be at least a year before Andalites arrived. Now… Now it looked like we had one last mission, and it was something Elfangor had put on the back burner as he tried to find solutions to other problems.

And I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel about that.

On one hand, I wanted to be done. The constant nightmares sucked. Hiding my emotions from my sisters sucked. Being one of five humans on the whole planet to know about the Yeerk invasion, oh that sucked. We had killed people, mauled aliens, watched aliens eat the dead and injured. We had barely escaped as squirrels in an access shaft. An access shaft used to bring rancid meat down to feed the rampaging alien worms that had attacked us with laser beams.

Now, though, I wondered what it would mean if this was the end of the line. Going back to normal, if we could ever be normal again, seemed like a lie. Of all the people in the world that could have found Elfangor, fate chose five teens coming home from the movie theater. I didn't even really believe in fate, not really, but this was different.

It made me special. Not just because I could turn into animals, no, that was just a bonus that came later.

Before Elfangor, I was a big sister and a lacrosse player. I was good. Our team had made the state quarterfinals. And if I gave it my all the last two years, maybe I'd get a college scholarship. The University of Maryland had the best women's lacrosse program in the country. And it was thousands of miles away, which was a plus. I wasn't sure what kind of major I'd get. It had been my sisters and lacrosse for so long, it was hard for me to imagine a different life. I didn't want to do what my parents did, I knew that much. Well, dad travelled for work, and that was cool. But I didn't think much about going into advertising, and I wasn't sure I wanted to be a lawyer. I wasn't ever having kids. I loved my sisters, but I wasn't a nurturer. But beyond freedom, I hadn't put much thought into what I would do with it.

What we were with Elfangor, that mattered. It made us important, made me important. And for as dangerous as it was, part of me was worried that it was about to go away.

Jake and Marco showed up after a point. We'd added more wood to the fire, and Cassie and I had gone through more than half a bag of marshmallows. Luckily, it turned out it wasn't the only bag, and there were plenty more hot dogs.

Marco grabbed sweats and a shirt from the duffel, and when he saw us roasting marshmallows, he drew a blank. "Are you kidding me?" he asked.

Tobias shrugged. "There are buns, ketchup, and mustard in the bag."

Marco smiled and shook his head. "Ah, hell, give me a stick."

Jake just smiled, got a stick, and sat down. "Hot dogs are a nice touch," he said. "I guess we should get this moving. Where should we start?"

"Tobias?" Marco said. "Can you get the stuff we worked on?"

Jake raised an eyebrow, but I was the first to call him on that. "You and Tobias worked on this without us?"

Marco waved his hand dismissively. "No, not really. I just tried to do some research. Here, let me show you."

Tobias handed Marco a roll of paper and the two of them rolled it out on the ground and weighted the corners with rocks. All of us huddled around to see by firelight. Tobias had his cell phone - the one Jake had bought for him - and turned on his flashlight. It was a bathymetric map of the Pacific, from British Columbia down to Baja California.

"Where did you even get this?" I asked.

"I checked with the library and the hall of public records, told them it was a summer project for school. They put me in touch with some marine institute or something, but this is what I got."

"Okay," Jake said. "Show us."

"Alright, so here's the Monterey Bay and Santa Cruz," he said, pointing to a star drawn in red Sharpie. "Elfangor said he was about four hundred and fifty miles southwest, so I started there."

In white colored pencil, Marco had apparently pulled a length of string or found a really big compass, but he had a series of white arcs. "These are between four hundred twenty miles out to four seventy. There are more seamounts out there than I would have thought, but if I had to put money on where he landed, I'm thinking right here," he said tapping.

"Okay, what's that?" Cassie asked.

"I could be mispronouncing it, but this is the Fieberling Tablemount. I actually haven't found much about it, save for some website that thinks it would be a good seasteading location."

"Seasteading?" Jake asked.

Marco rolled his eyes and made a maturbatory gesture with his hand. "Anti-government whackos with money that basically want to create their own sovereign city on the high seas."

"You're kidding," I said.

He shrugged. "Apparently, the ability to do it isn't that far off of offshore oil rigs. It's more of a legal-sovereignty debate. But anyway, for the distance and depth that Elfangor gave us, this seamount is the best fit I found. I even have longitude and latitude."

"Okay," Jake said. "So we have an idea of where we're going. But the real question is how do we get there?"

"It's not just getting to coordinates, either," Cassie said. "There's the depth, too. How deep did Elfangor say?"

"Four hundred meters," I said. "More than thirteen hundred feet."

Jake shook his head. "This is going to be a nightmare, isn't it?"

"Better than bombs," Marco said. "Look, I see it in three parts." He counted them off on his fingers. "We need to get there, that's part one. Then we have to dive a quarter mile down… somehow. And the last part is we have to then bring an Andalite up from that depth."

There was some silence as we thought about that.

"Well, it doesn't solve getting there, and getting it is going to be a challenge on its own, but I do know a way down there," Cassie said.

"Okay, what are you thinking?" Jake asked.

"Well, there's only so many animals that can dive that far. But a sperm whale can do it and then some."

That information came rushing back to me. I remembered watching Blue Planet on Netflix with my sisters. "They can hold their breath for more than an hour, right?"

Cassie nodded. "Almost two. Maybe more. Males have bigger lungs than females, so they can go deeper and stay down longer."

Marco started tearing it down. It wasn't malicious, but every proposed solution offered its own complications. He actually said the same thing I was thinking. "How do we acquire a sperm whale? That's not something we're just gonna find at the Monterey Bay Aquarium."

Cassie shrugged. "I don't know. We're going to have to do some research."

Jake nodded. "So we do some research, figure out how to acquire a sperm whale." He paused, realizing that this had already ballooned from one mission to a bunch of smaller missions. "Any idea how to get there. I mean, we can fly, right?"

Cassie shook her head. "Not as owls or ravens, no. I mean, we get albatrosses in this part of California, and they can spend a lot of time at sea, but they top out at sixty, seventy miles an hour. Let me think… so yeah, assuming the high end and ideal wind conditions, it would take six and a half hours, flying over feature-less ocean, with no watch to time morphs."

"Plus," I added, "we'd have to ditch in the Pacific in the middle of nowhere to demorph. That's probably something we should be prepared for anyway, but maybe try to limit that."

"I'm not a great swimmer," Tobias said.

Great.

"How bad are we talking?" Jake asked.

Tobias shrugged. "I mean if we're just talking a few minutes while we switch morphs, that should be fine, but I just figured I should put that out there before it becomes an issue."

Marco gave him a friendly jab to the shoulder. "We're not acquiring a whale tomorrow. I can take you to the beach if you want." Tobias pushed him back.

"Okay, I think we made some progress on the logistics," Jake said. "Distance… that's going to be something we need to work on. But we need to move on to the next part." I looked at him, but he was looking at Tobias.

"Yeah," he said. "It's time to call Aximili."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

* * *

Elfangor hadn't shown any of us how to use the communications array except Tobias, and he really didn't know how it worked. Not fully. He had written down the step-by-step instructions on a little notepad, which was a detail we hadn't known last week.

I shook my head a little. We all had our little moments before we'd gone to San Jose to infiltrate the Yeerk pool. Jake had spent time watching TV with his brother or something. I had a makeover night with my sisters. Jordie was only just now getting old enough to have a little makeup and Sara was almost never allowed, so even just having some nail polish, lipstick, and eyeshadow was a treat for her. Of course, I had ended up looking like a clown, but hey, little sisters.

Anyway, Elfangor had left instructions on how to use his shit without him. It was hard to make heads or tails of whether he had ever even planned to come back. We found out in his last minutes that this was not his first trip to Earth, and it kinda tarnished our experiences a bit. He had lied by omission, kept secrets, and it made me question his intentions and some of the things he told us.

Tobias made his adjustments, and turned on the device.

Nothing.

"Is it working?" I asked.

Tobias nodded. "If I did it right, yes, it should be on."

Marco made a face. "I thought Elfangor said he couldn't understand English unless he was close enough to pick up brain waves or something."

"It's built for thought-speech," Tobias said. "I don't even know if it sends audio at all."

"He could understand us fine last time," Cassie said.

"Well if we're broadcasting, maybe let's stop talking like he can't hear us," I said. "Aximili? Aximili, are you there?"

Nothing. No answer. We waited a while. Longer than we probably should have. Tobias triple checked the comm array, struggling to find a step that he had screwed up. He was hoping it was technical. The unspoken alternative was that Aximili could hear us but was deliberately ignoring us.

Marco, unsurprisingly, was the first to give up. Or at least, the first to say it out loud. "Fuck this shit. T, turn it off."

Tobias didn't though. Not right away. I could see the conflicting emotions on his face as he turned to Jake. My cousin sighed, clearly exasperated. He nodded to Tobias. The shutdown process seemed easier, but that didn't put us in a great position.

"We're not going to be able to do this without some cooperation on his end," I said.

Marco nodded. "She's right. We don't know anything about the dome ship except that it's big and presumably dome-shaped. Whale morphs are fine for getting down there, but we don't know what kind of airlocks that thing has."

Tobias shrugged. "It's like an aircraft carrier, though, right? I mean Elfangor's ship wasn't whale sized, but it has to have some kind of serious bay doors. Right?"

"See, that right there is exactly the kind of technical question we need answered," Marco said.

"We can try again tomorrow," Cassie said. "We knew this wasn't going to be a one-night thing, and he just lost his brother. We can give him some time."

"No," Jake said. "We really can't. It's been a week. Elfangor said he had enough air and water for a month. He's down to two or three weeks now, and we can't give him anymore bereavement time."

"Well, what do you want us to do about it?" I asked.

"We could go to the library…" Marco said, kinda trailing off.

"Do they have books on alien spaceships?" Tobias asked, not missing a beat.

Marco explained that internet results for the Fieberling tablemount were frustratingly sparse, but the few web results he had found referenced journal publications. And because of the unique submarine geology of the Monterey Bay, there was no shortage of marine or oceanographic institutes in the area. So the library had some of those publications in stock. And of course, it might not hurt to learn some stuff on sperm whales either.

It wasn't a bad plan, I guess. There were worse ways for me to spend a Saturday morning than hanging out at the local library. It was conveniently located near the high school, so not that far of a walk. But while Jake and Marco did both have work, they were working different shifts. Jake would be starting around eleven this morning, and as I had no issue dropping him off at the movie theater, he was fine with me having the SUV. I would have to go pick him up after work, but when I brought that detail to his attention, he'd just reminded me that I still had yet to see Wonder Womanso that gave us a plan for later. And since he wasn't working till closing, that was an option for my sisters, too.

We adjourned our little meeting, tossed clothes back in the duffel, and one by one, all of us except Tobias morphed into owls to head home. All told, it wasn't a total loss, I supposed. We struck out on Aximili. That sucked. But we had a plan. It was somewhere to start, and that was the part I tried to focus on as I flew home.

It was late when I flew in my bedroom window. I remembered seeing the clock after I demorphed and shut my window; after two thirty. Marshmallows, hot dogs, and alien rescue plans, what a night. I had a headache, I was tired, and I knew I'd have my sisters all day. I changed out of my fitness apparel and back into my nightclothes, and got some ibuprofen from the bathroom medicine cabinet. I don't actually remember getting back in bed.

It was a quarter till nine or thereabouts when I woke up. I hadn't gotten a ton of sleep, but that wasn't out of the ordinary for me anyway. For the first time in a week, though, I had slept through the night without any nightmares. And without the nightmares, six hours felt like enough.

My sisters were in the living room eating PopTarts. Sara was watching Glitter Force and Jordan was playing a game on her tablet as she listened to music. They got themselves breakfast. They weren't fighting. There is a God. Or my sisters love me. One of those seems more likely than the other.

When Sara saw me, she paused Netflix. "Hey, Rachel. Are we going back to the beach today?"

I laughed. "We went to the beach yesterday."

"I like the beach," she said, like I was missing something. For a girl not yet in second grade, she was a sharp little thing sometimes.

"We might get to the beach later, okay?," I said. "We're going to the library first."

"Oh, okay." Just like that, she went back to her cartoon. Sara was easy like that sometimes. Other times, she could really dig her heels in, though, and I was glad this was not one of those times.

"Wait," Jordan said, apparently hearing us over her headphones. "Why are we going to the library?"

I gave her my best because-I-said-so look. "Because," I said, "your sister is starting second grade in three months and I'm supposed to keep you guys on your summer reading."

Jordan rolled her eyes at me and made a face.

"You got headphones and a Kindle. You can survive an hour or two at the library." God, I sounded like Mom.

I got Jordan and Sara ready to go, made sure they were dressed and presentable, then went to unload the dishwasher. That's when Jake showed up, naturally. Jordan let him in.

"Hey, Jordie. Where's Rachel?"

"Kitchen."

"Ah, there you are. Ready to go?"

"Yeah, just… Fuck it, I don't even know why I'm doing this. Not like anyone is gonna need a spoon while we're out."

Jake laughed. "Got your house key?"

Jake packed my sisters into his SUV while I locked up. He rode shotgun and let me drive him to work so we didn't have to park.

The downtown branch of the Santa Cruz public library is kind of an odd looking building. It's a blonde-white brick building, with red accents and a wraparound brown-shingle roof separating the second floor. The parking lot was on Church Street, and in the summer, the row of oak trees gave rise to an obscuring green canopy that brilliantly contrasted the red paint. The first floor had been recently renovated. I guess taking a cue from bookstores, part of the first floor had been set up as a quaint little cafe, and the smell of coffee and tea mixed with the aroma of old books and laminated posters. Sara took off for the children's section immediately and started looking around for books. Jordan found a bean bag chair, plopped down, and went back to her Kindle.

But I found Marco and Tobias at the computer station, the part that ran like part cyber cafe and part budget copy shop.

"Hey, you guys been here long?" I asked quietly.

"No, about twenty minutes," Tobias said.

I looked over to make sure Sara hadn't run off, and she was sitting with some oversized book on kittens. She could read, but she still preferred picture books. "Find anything yet?"

"Yeah," Marco said. He handed me a book on sperm whales. It was thick, almost two inches.

"Okay… am I supposed to sit and read this whole thing?" I asked.

Marco shrugged. "If you want to. The Wikipedia page referenced that book a lot, and I figured we could make some notes." He handed me a small stack of index cards and a print out of the Wikipedia page riddled with yellow highlighter.

"Okay, so I have the book on whales, what are you two doing?"

"Tobias is looking into whale watching tours."

"Oh, that's gotta be expensive," I said. I knew those tours ran about a hundred bucks a person, minimum. Good ones cost way more.

"Yeah, thank Christ we don't have to actually buy tickets. Just trying to find out where to find a good spot to find them."

"Right. So he's doing that, I'm doing this, what about you?"

"Oceanographics and bathymetry," he said. "The Fieberling is just one of a small cluster of undersea mountains so I want to try to get some info in case we need to hit one of the others."

For the one of us that had been trying to make an exit, Marco had easily done the most legwork for this mission. Bathymetric maps weren't something you just happened on, so this was something he'd put effort into. Maybe he wasn't as finished as he thought he was. Or, more likely, he was trying to get this mission over with and he was making sure we didn't fuck up anything this time.

Getting out there and back was going to be at least nine hundred miles of open Pacific. Getting the whale morph was one leg of it, but we weren't going to swim there. "Any idea how we're going to get there if we're not on a boat?"

He shrugged. "Cassie's going to work on some of that from home, probably hear from her later. She's doing chores right now, so not sure when."

Between the normal chores like doing her laundry and doing dishes, Cassie was basically a zookeeper and a vet tech at her house. The Wildlife Rehabilitation Center was something both of her parents did, but since her mom worked for the Lexington Zoological Gardens and her dad taught the veterinary program at UCSC, a lot of the day-to-day care of the animals was done by Cassie. Actual care was done by her parents, and to a lesser extent, by UCSC graduate students. But changing bandages, filling food dishes, mucking stalls, and delivering medications, all of that could be done - and was expected to be done - by Cassie. Plus, they housed horses for some riding school. So there was always stuff to do there and she only had so much free time.

I think, like me, she was really getting sick of it. I had never really expressed much interest in boys, because, you know, reasons, but Cassie's dad was one of those not-my-daughter types and I half-wondered if they weren't keeping her so busy at home on purpose.

What is it with parents that they treat daughters like this anyway? Jake didn't have to deal with this kind of stuff. If he wanted to play video games on a weekend, take girls to a movie, or be out late, Aunt Jean would let him. He had freedom as he wanted it. He had responsibilities, just like I did. But he earned equity with his parents, and for some reason, that just wasn't a thing that seemed to happen for girls. Not me, not Cassie, not Melissa. For whatever reason, my parents simultaneously treated me like an adult while refusing to acknowledge that I wasn't thirteen anymore. Everything they asked me to do was just an expectation. And everything I did was just… nothing. I earned no trust, got no brownie points. I got paid, so what was the problem? I did the math once. I made less than a buck seventy a day in the summer, and no defined days off. It was probably going to surprise the hell out of Mom, but when I turned eighteen, I was gone.

Anyway, Marco went off to find the oceanographic articles and I sat down with my whale book in a chair next to Sara. The book had some really interesting notes. Sperm whales dive very deep. In fact, it's not really fully understood how deep they can dive. Their average seemed to be between three and eight hundred meters, well within the expected four hundred we needed to go. But they could dive more than a kilometer down, over thirty-two hundred feet. And they could hold their breath for an hour and a half. Maybe more.

I set the book down on one of the tables in the children section and got my phone out of my purse. I like skirts, but sometimes I wish they had pockets. I found a website that calculated pressure at depth. It was something I probably would've been happier not knowing. At four hundred meters, the whale experienced forty atmospheres of pressure. Nearly six hundred pounds per square inch. And that was nothing. At a thousand meters, they could tolerate more than twice that. There was some evidence that they could even go as deep as two thousand meters.

I took a moment to remind myself that I was in a library. I looked out the window to the June sun, and saw the oak trees ripple in the breeze. I forced myself to breathe. Thinking about the diving and the pressure, I think I'd made myself a bit claustrophobic.

I was actually thinking about becoming an animal so large that it wouldn't fit in the library. And we weren't just going to go whale-watching either. We needed to touch it to acquire it, and the thought of having to pet such a leviathan was making me nervous. This was an animal that could get up to sixty feet long and weigh more than forty tons. They were arguably kings of the ocean. They ate giant squid. Like seriously the mythical kraken of the deep, and these things ate them like chicken nuggets. Most sperm whales had scars from tentacles.

And I had seen that Chris Hemsworth movie, In the Heart of the Sea, the true story of a sperm whale attacking a whaling ship and the inspiration for Moby Dick .

I pushed thoughts of Ahab aside and joined Tobias. I could probably have spent more time going through the book. I probably would later. But I knew more about sperm whales in fifteen minutes than I ever thought I'd need to know and I didn't feel like loitering in the library was helping our situation.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I think I have an idea for finding our whale," he said. He pointed at the monitor. There in the Chrome browser was a page on the Farallon Islands.

Located just thirty miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, the islands were a popular destination for whale watching tours, and in the summer through the fall, sperm whales came to the islands to feed.

"Okay, lemme go get Marco."

Marco was impressed but skeptical when we brought him up to speed. "They don't list sperm whales in their tours," he said.

"Well, they sorta do," I said. They did have them on the site, but it was more in the vein of an outside chance. Oh, and sometimes there are sperm whales. If sperm whales were a high probability, the whale-watching charters would almost certainly have it as a selling point.

Tobias shrugged. "I think it's a matter of how they run the boat tours, more than it is the whales being out there."

"What do you mean?" Marco asked.

"Well, the whales are only at the surface for like fifteen minutes to half an hour before diving again. They're down for an hour, possibly two. It's only an eight hour boat ride so it's a crap shoot. Have to be at the right place at the right time."

"Alright, I'll buy that. At any rate, it's something we can run with. What are we thinking?"

Tobias zoomed in on the map. "Okay, the Farallon Islands are a small cluster of islands. This is the biggest one here, the one with the abandoned lighthouse, but there are researchers stationed on the island. Over here, though," he said pointing to two smaller islands," these are basically just rocks in the ocean. As far from human eyes as it's possible to be in California."

Marco nodded. He looked around the library - which wasn't particularly busy but not empty either - to make sure we weren't going to be overheard. Being a library, we weren't exactly being loud to begin with. "Okay, so morph a seabird of some sort, fly out to the islands. Demorph, fly off again, and scan for sperm whales?"

Tobias nodded. "Can you think of a better idea?"

Marco smiled. "No, dude, I think given what we have to work with, this is perfect."

I looked at the photos of the islands on the monitor. Just a swath of rock in the ocean. And judging by the sea spray in the photos, the seas were rough enough out there. We had never flown out in bad weather, and neither the owl or the raven were seabirds.

"If we're going to have to land and demorph, not to mention demorph in the sea, we might wanna think about more utilitarian morphing outfits," I said.

Marco looked at me. "Does our mismatched assortment of underwear and gym clothes offend your fashionista sensibilities?"

I rolled my eyes. "Like you said in the beginning, it's not like none of you have seen me in a bikini before. But I think all of us might prefer something more than underwear."

"What are you thinking?" Tobias asked.

"Actually, it's something that came to my mind yesterday at the beach. Marco, how much are wetsuits?"

He laughed, but nodded. "That's not a bad idea really. Wetsuits aren't cheap, but it's definitely something to look into. I know some guys at the surf shop, I'll see what I can do."

Before she died, Marco's mom had worked for a surfing and diving shop as an instructor. Marco had probably forgotten more about open-water swimming than I ever knew.

"Hey, speaking of which, I wanted to check if you were serious about teaching Tobias to swim."

"Yeah, why?"

I had to admit that it actually wasn't a terrible idea, really. I could swim well enough, but I'd never been in open water. I've never been so far out that I couldn't swim back to shore. But I hedged it, instead. "My sisters want to hit the beach again, thought maybe we'd join you guys," I said.

He paused for a second as though wondering how three girls were going to impact his plan for the day. "Hmm. I have work in a few hours and some things to do at home. Swim lesson's probably going to be Monday when I'm off."

"So we're done here?" I asked.

"Yeah," Marco said. "Just about. I already checked out that book by Whitehead, so you can take it home if you want."

I rolled my eyes. "And just why exactly am I suddenly the one entrusted to learn whale facts?"

He shrugged. "Fine, I'll take it."

"Oh," Tobias said suddenly. "I was curious about one thing. I never understood why they're called sperm whales."

I'm sure I turned bright red. "God, Tobias, are you twelve?"

"Oh, please. No, seriously. Like if they were tadpole-shaped, I'd get it. But who named those whales?"

I knew the answer. But it was something I didn't want to say. I learned reading the book Marco gave me, and it was one of those things that I wished I didn't know. "Yeah, its… um… it goes back to whaling days and you know… stupid whalers."

"Okay, so how did they get that name?" Marco asked.

I sighed. I looked around again to make sure no one would hear us, especially not my sisters. "Okay, fine, I'll tell you, but I'm going to regret it immediately." I grabbed the book where I'd set it by Tobias and opened it to a diagram of a sperm whale skull and the tissues that made up its distinctive box-like head. "Okay, so this is their jaw. You see how narrow it is. All this bulk in their heads is soft tissue, and this organ here is filled with this emulsion of waxy oil. It helps with echolocation, I guess. The wax hardens as the whale dives."

The boys looked at me. "And they named it the sperm whale because…?" Tobias pressed.

I never blushed so hard in my whole life. "Well, they were harvesting whales for the whale oil, the stuff… it's kind of a white, milky liquid…"

Marco put his hand in his mouth to keep from laughing. Tobias leaned over and had this really awkward silent laugh. Tobias got his voice first. "You're telling me that old-timey whalers thought its head was full of cum?" he asked.

I nodded. "Hundreds and hundreds of gallons of it." My cheeks felt like they were going to catch fire.

It sounds crass, but it's true. The actual scientific name for the waxy substances is spermaceti . It literally means whale cum, and not one scientist in two and a half centuries thought to maybe make up a new word for it. Saying it in Latin doesn't really make it any less crass. It took me ten seconds to find out the Latin for 'deep wax' was cera abyssi and I think that sounds prettier. Maybe whale biologists just get a kick out of a really old dirty joke?

"That's... that's a lot of splooge," Marco said.

"More than you've got," I said. "Now stop with the jizz jokes, okay. My sisters are here."

"Yeah, yeah," Marco said. "You guys are good to go. I checked and you aren't allowed to check out scientific journals, so I need to stay here and make some copies and shit."

I had little else in mind for the day, and while I would have liked to have done the open water stuff, that wasn't really a big deal as far as my sisters were concerned. I had the SUV, so really I didn't need anyone else to go with me. Still, though, I felt like having some company. "Hey, Tobias," I said, casually. "You want to come to the beach?"

He looked surprised. "With you?"

"Yes, silly. With me. And them," I said, gesturing to my sisters.

"I, uh… Yeah, I guess. I was going to head back over to Cassie's after this."

"No," I said, suddenly emphatic. "I'm not going to have you live in the woods like some kind of doomsday prepper. You're going to the beach."

Marco chuckled. "You're not getting out of this, Tobes. If Rachel says you're going, you can go willingly or you can be kidnapped."

A few minutes later, the four of us were in the SUV. My sisters were very intrigued that Tobias was in the car. They knew him mostly as the weird kid that played with them at the zoo the other day. And they had seen the giant sand sculpture he had made at the beach the day before. So Tobias was cool with my sisters. Tobias, though, seemed very uncomfortable as he buckled in next to me.

He wasn't this weird when we had stolen a car. Now that had been fun.

It wasn't that big of a deal, really. Well, yeah, felony and all, but Tobias knew how to hotwire a car if it had come to it, and at any rate, someone at the shop had apparently changed out the ignition and it had keys. Since Tobias knew about the chop shop, and since ravens could get in an open window, it had actually been really easy to pull off. We didn't get caught, which was the important thing, but Jake really seemed to think we had some big secret mission to get it, and neither Tobias or I had really felt like telling him just how easy it was.

"Are your parents going to be okay with you having a boy over?" he asked.

That… that was actually a good question. I mean, we were going home for lunch and changing, then going to the beach. It's not like anything would happen, but the only boy I'd ever had over before had been Jake, and obviously my mom was fine with my cousin hanging out. I half wanted to say fuck it. I was sixteen and had never had a boyfriend. Making Tobias a sandwich shouldn't have a stigma to it. But there was no way my sisters wouldn't mention it. I didn't have the energy to get into a thing with my mom.

"Fine," I said. And for a minute, Tobias looked a bit relieved that I would let him out of the beach trip. Fat chance, Tobes. "Let me call Cassie. She should be done with her morning rounds."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

* * *

"That doesn't make any sense," Cassie said, emptying another can of tuna into a bowl. "I mean, I'm not saying there's anything between you and Tobias, but wouldn't me being here make it _easier_ for you to ditch your sisters?"

I laughed, handing her the mayonnaise. We were in my kitchen, making sandwiches before heading to the beach. "I never said parents make sense. But now instead of having a _boy_ over, I just had some _friends_ over."

"I don't know," she said, spooning the tuna salad onto several slices of bread, "I think you're putting a lot of faith in semantics, Rae."

"You realize, Cass, that if I just so happened to have Jake over, you could tell your parents you were just hanging out at Rachel's?"

"Good point. What time does he get off work?"

"Not soon enough," I said laughing and packing the cooler with ice. "We got some usable info from the library, but no closer to getting out there."

"I did a little more research, and we may have more options on the depth side than I expected. Do you have lettuce or tomatoes?"

"Yeah, in the vegetable crisper," I said. "So what else can dive that deep?"

"See, that's what threw me off. I was thinking about animals that have to breathe. There are plenty of fish that can hit that depth."

"Okay, for example?"

She shrugged and proceeded to start slicing the tomato. "Tuna for one," she said, gesturing to empty cans beside her, "sharks, swordfish, squid."

"Ew, calamari. So what do you think, should we scratch the whale plan?" The cooler was almost ready. Bottled water, iced teas, apples, bananas, and sandwiches were almost ready. "You know, I can make a tuna salad sandwiches. You don't have to help."

She shrugged again. "Yeah, yeah. No, I like the whale plan. But we might want to consider a few alternatives. Options open, right? Are we packing the sandwiches or eating here?"

"Let's just eat here. I'll go get Tobias and the girls."

I had to smile when I found my sisters. Sara and Jordan had wrestled Tobias to the floor and Tobias was pretending to flail like they were killing him. He growled and tried to get up, only for Jordan to push him back down again.

"What's going on in here?" I asked, arms crossed as I leaned on the archway.

" _Rachel!_ " Sara squealed. " _The monster is escaping!_ "

"Honey, that's not a monster. That's just Tobias."

Tobias play-roared, sat up, grabbed my seven-year-old sister in a bear hug and pretended to bite her shoulder. "Don't listen to her," he said. "I can be a monster if you want."

Sara giggled, but she got up and she and Jordan helped Tobias off the floor. "Are we going to the beach yet?"

"Sara, you don't even have your suit on yet," I said. "Go eat lunch and then change. Then we're going."

My sisters ran to the kitchen and grabbed their sandwiches from Cassie. Tobias looked embarrassed for some reason.

"You're good with kids," I said.

He shrugged, and the two of us ate our sandwiches quickly. Tobias wolfed his down like he hadn't eaten in awhile, and suddenly I wondered if those hot dogs hadn't been the last thing he had to eat. I had skipped breakfast myself, and I was hungrier than I'd realized. My sisters finished quickly, and went up to their bedrooms to change into their swimsuit. I still had to get mine on.

"Tobias," I said, "do you need to swing by your place? Get your swim trunks?"

"No, I'm good to go."

I looked at him, remembering him at the beach yesterday in cargo shorts rather than swim trunks. I knew Tobias had homelife issues. I knew most of his clothes were overworn or secondhand. But the idea that he might not own a swimsuit… I don't know. I knew he was in a lower income bracket than my family. I hadn't really thought much of how much different his reality was from mine until now. My parents had three girls, and that's a lot of pink tax.

If you think the pink tax is a myth, well, you're wrong. Women's jeans cost more than men's jeans. Women's body wash is more expensive than men's body wash. Our razors cost more, our shave gel costs more, and we have more to shave, so we have to buy them more often. Going to the hair salon was so much more expensive than it would be for a man. And that doesn't account for the stuff we buy that men don't need. Women spend more on underwear than men will ever understand. Hell, one bra just at Target prices would buy my dad five pair of boxers. Makeup was its own monster. That didn't account for pads or tampons. And yeah, Jordan wasn't quite to the age where she needed to shave her legs or buy pads. But she was in training bras already.

To sum up, as girls transition to women, we just get so much more expensive.

I might have my issues regarding my station in life, and maybe it was unfair of me to gripe about taking care of my sisters considering how much my parents worked to make sure we didn't want for anything. I never had to worry if I needed a new backpack for school, or new cleats for lacrosse. I went shopping with my mom on a semi-regular basis. She liked to go out on her days off, spoil us. My dad took us places too. He took us to the Boardwalk, out on fishing trips, go-kart tracks. He taught me about cars, how to change the oil, how to put on new disc brakes. We talked about getting me a car. Not a new car, but something safe and dependable as a graduation present. I knew I was going to college. I knew my parents weren't going to pay for everything, and I knew I was going to have to work my way through a degree, but I also had zero doubts that my parents would cosign my student loans. I had a comfortable middle-class existence.

Tobias had none of that.

And he seemed so unbothered by it. He didn't talk to me about it, but it wasn't a secret that his uncle was a bad person. You don't camp in the woods the way he was doing unless you hate being home. My sisters might not necessarily be my responsibility, but they were my family, and everyone has to pitch in, right? I couldn't imagine living without the little safety nets that I had.

I pushed the idea out of my head. I went up to my room and changed into my bikini, and got the rest of my shit together. I made sure I had my clutch bag, my sunglasses. Tobias was loading the cooler full of drinks and fruit into the SUV when I came back down. Cassie had already grabbed the beach bag from the garage and my sisters were already in the backseat.

I locked up behind me and drove the few miles to the beach in a slightly uncomfortable silence. Not that it was quiet. My sisters seemed to like Tobias and he had promised to teach them how he made sand sculptures. They were debating on what they wanted to sculpt and of course the two of them settled on a mermaid.

We parked and set up again. I put sunscreen on my sisters before Tobias took them up a bit and they started working on their sand sculpture. By the time Cassie and I had the beach blankets and umbrella set up, I didn't really feel like playing anymore. I was suddenly tired, worn thin, and I laid down on the towel and just tried to chill in the afternoon sun.

"You're too pale to lay there without sunblock," Cassie said.

"Eat me," I said, taking the proffered blue bottle of SPF 30.

"You okay?" she asked. I sighed. She knew I wasn't. She wasn't pushing, that wasn't Cassie's way. But she gave me an in, a little opening so I could talk if I wanted to. And if i didn't want to talk, she'd let it go till I was ready. Usually. Sometimes, much as I hate it, your friends have to push.

"No," I said. "I'm not." I opened the cooler and grabbed a water bottle. Cassie nodded, but she didn't say anything. "Mind if I vape?" I asked.

"No, it's cool."

I would never, ever smoke. But I liked my vape pen. I technically wasn't old enough to buy vape juice, but as long as I didn't buy nicotine flavors, my parents didn't mind me having it. I took a puff of the mint flavor I liked and watched the blue horizon. It really was a beautiful day. I wished I could just enjoy it, just turn off my head and have fun. I remembered how the water felt on my skin when Tobias had impulsively thrown me. I understood sad smiles. Not enough to be really happy, but enough to bring a memory of happiness. I had been happy, and it was enough to smile, but that didn't make it mean anything. Tobias smiled like that all the time. The closest he really got to being happy anymore was to remember that once he used to be.

"I'm having an existential crisis," I said, trying to be nonchalant about it. Casual in crisis. That was really the tagline for our whole fucking generation. "Is it weird that planning an oceanic mission to find an alien is less stressful than going to the beach with friends?"

"Rae, stress is relative. My mom can do surgery on a mountain lion and be fine, but I've heard her yell obscenities at the DVR. I can spend all day covered in poop, and yet I can't stand the smell of the perfume counter at the mall. If it's stress in your flavor, you'd be surprised how much you can take. Or how little of it other people can swallow."

"Damn, Cass."

She flashed me that adorable smile of hers. "I do have my moments, thank you. So, what you have to ask yourself is what about the beach makes it hard. And what makes it easier to look up whale facts."

I laughed. "Isn't that the million-dollar question." But it came to me suddenly, and easier than I would have thought a minute ago. "It's easier to think about morphing whales and diving after spaceships because even though that's crazy, it's still real. This, my sisters, everything else… It's pretending that everything is normal that's eating me up inside."

She laughed. "Yesterday, I got mad at Tobias because an actual redtail hawk didn't answer me."

"Seriously?" The image of Cassie talking to a wild raptor, and then getting mad at a human boy when that bird didn't answer her, was borderline hysterical.

"I thought he was giving me the silent treatment," she said defensively.

"Yeah," I said. "But he's kinda quiet anyway, isn't he?"

Her expression shifted slightly then. "Yeah, and you have to watch out for the quiet ones."

"Tobias? He seems harmless, Cass."

She shook her head. "I mean you have to look out for them because more often than not, they're not going to look out for themselves. A boy like that, that keeps everything inside, has gone a long damn time with no one he thought would listen. And when no one hears you when you speak, what's the point of talking?"

I looked at Tobias again, at the smiling face that taught my sisters how to form sand into shapes. This was the way he interacted with the world, I guess. He liked to draw things. He was creative, talented. But he smiled like that just to lie to us that he was happy, that he was okay. And it occurred to me slowly that I had never really seen him smile for real before we had met Elfangor. And all the ones after were hollow.

Sometimes, sad smiles are all you have. Because sometimes, remembering the good times just has to be enough. That was his secret. That was the Zen that made him so resilient.

Tobias smiled at me, and I felt myself smile back. And I felt like crying.

Enough with the pity party. I did eventually go and play in the sand. Cassie did too. I still wasn't really in the mood to have fun, but making the mermaid was a welcome distraction. Tobias made it seem easy. He could see the finished project. I think that helped with the Zen, too. For as much as he kept bottled up, it wasn't all bad times and hurts. He saw a beauty in the world, I think. He could look at a pile of sand and see mermaids.

The process was very similar to making a sandcastle, insofar as the only ingredients were just sand and water. But without the mold of s beach pail to help make the shapes, a lot was just straightforward sculpting. Tobias said the key to good sand sculpture was picking the right subject. Sand has a limit to how much it will stick, and certain parts aren't possible unless you're using a particular type of sand. So the basic form of the mermaid was compact and low to the ground. She was styled like a woman lying down on a bed, and Tobias made surprisingly quick work of the body and tail.

"The real work," he said, "is getting the details right." He had found a stick and was using it to draw fish scales in the mermaid's tail when I heard my text tone.

I got a text from my dad. That's how the afternoon shifted. His flight was overbooked and he'd be later coming home. I tried not to let it bug me, but my mood was already getting to me.

The more I took care of my sisters, the more I realized how most of my childhood had already been spent. I mean, I was sixteen, it's not like I was a child. I was beyond pony rides and bedtime stories. I had outgrown Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I had a locked drawer in my bedroom with a vibrator and a wad of saved cash, some five hundred dollars at last count. In many ways, I was a woman already. But there were just a few things left that made me a girl still - a girl that just wanted a few more days where she didn't have to be a grown up yet.

Some days, I just wanted to sit with my parents - and my inescapable sisters - and make popcorn with the air popper the way Dad had shown me, and watch old movies like we used to. When was the last family movie night?

That reminded me that Jake had suggested seeing _Wonder Woman_. I checked showtimes. If we left in the next ten minutes, we'd make it. We'd all smell like beach, maybe, but that wasn't going to kill anyone. Two hours at the beach, and none of us had even got in the water.

I wasn't surprised when Tobias wanted to stay behind and finish the mermaid. I looked at Tobias. I trusted him with my life, as I'd probably have been bear meat without him. But as much as I wanted to invite him along, I just didn't know how to put it in words. I was more than willing to pay for him to go, but I didn't think he'd accept. He seemed embarrassed enough that we'd fed him a sandwich. Watching him meticulously work the sand sculpture, I figured the movie would probably not be as satisfying for him anyway.

Cassie was fine to go to the movies. She didn't have to be back home till six, and if we caught the next showing - Jake didn't get employee perks for IMAX and I wasn't paying those prices - then we would be out of the movie around five.

"I don't want to see _Wonder Woman_ , " Sara said when we got in the car.

"Ugh," I said.

"Why can't I stay with Toby?" Sara asked. That did surprise me. I had never really taken Tobias for a 'Toby.' Tobes, yes. T, yes. But not Toby. That seemed a bit enfantalizing to me. Then again, she was only seven.

"Honey, I don't think that would go over well with Mom. Tobias is Jake's friend, Aunt Jean knows him, but I don't think mom does as much."

Sara amped up the cuteness factor and tried to appeal to Cassie to stay at the beach with her. But Cassie knew my sisters too well. "Sorry, sweetie, but I've been waiting all day for Jake to get off work. The beach will be here tomorrow."

"So will Jake," she pouted.

"Tobias has already taken a dozen pics of that mermaid, Sara," I assured her. "And I would really like to see the movie, okay?"

Cassie saved the day. "Sara, look," she said, pointing to her cell phone screen. "The only other movie for kids is _Captain Underpants_. If you really don't want to see _Wonder Woman_ , I'll go with you to that one."

I parked in the same lot Jake usually parked in. The last time I had gotten in his SUV from this parking lot, an alien fell out of the sky. Odd how in just a few days, so many little things and memories Elfangor had wormed his way into. A parking garage, Cassie's barn had to be so weird for her, the Surf City Grille in the Boardwalk. Even the tree outside Melissa's window reminded me of him.

I got tickets using the employee pass Jake had given me, paid the difference for the other two tickets, and then went off to bother Jake at the snack counter. He was too busy to really harass much, but he shot Cassie a smile that could start a fire, and I had to laugh to myself. Jake and I had grown up together, and I'd been friends with Cassie for a long, long time. It was really adorable the way the two of them had no idea how to behave in front of the other.

I probably shouldn't judge. Even if I wasn't that keen on dating, I probably would eventually, and then I'd be doing the same thing. Except I'd be older by then, so I'd be even more awkward.

We let Jake know when we were getting out, I put my phone on silent, and Cassie and I split up.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

* * *

I won't ruin _Wonder Woman_. I will say that while I did enjoy the movie, I felt it failed to really live up to the female empowerment hype that surrounded its release. A lot of it was good, and there were some definite girl-power moments to the film, but once Chris Pine showed up, there was something of a tone shift. I was glad that Sara skipped out on it, though, because it did have some innuendo.

The other thing of course, is that no matter how good the movie was, it was still set in the Zack Snyder's DC Cinematic Universe, and I had already given up on the franchise after _Batman vs Superman_ . I mean, I liked Cavill as Superman. Amy Adams did fine as Lois Lane - though I'm enough of a purist that her red hair seemed to put out something of a Lana Lang vibe. But by the end of _Man of Steel_ , I had very little faith left in the series' longevity and _Suicide Squad_ basically took a dump on what was already a mess of continuity.

Yes, I am a comics nerd. Vitriolic comments can be left down below.

The movie wrapped up, made the typical nods to future installments. I was not above using the empty seat in front of me to wipe popcorn butter off my hands, and I took Jordan out to the ladies room. Cassie and Sara's movie had started later than ours, but it wasn't as long, so we wouldn't have to wait long. At any rate, Jake had already clocked out, and he was waiting for us in the lobby.

"How'd you like it?" he asked.

"It was great!" Jordan exclaimed. "She's such a badass."

"Language," I said. Jake gave me a sidelong glance, pressing for my opinion. "It wasn't terrible. I liked it, but for all the hype about a female director, I think it could have used a woman's touch in the screenplay too."

Jake smiled. He was used to my feminist comments, and whether or not he agreed with me, he knew enough to respect my convictions. And it helps that I was right, of course.

I gave Jordan a dollar and told her to hit the crane game. It wouldn't keep her busy for long, but I didn't need that much time.

"The library went well," I said.

"Yeah, Marco mentioned."

I whipped my head over to the snack counter and saw Marco smiling to customers as he filled more popcorn. "So you know the plan?"

He nodded. "I think we have the bones of part of a plan. The more I think about this, the more I think it's going to be more than three phases, and we're going to need to reconvene on the whole thing."

I had already been thinking that myself. "Marco works till closing, right?"

"Yeah. I texted Tobias already. He'll be there. I know your dad is coming home tonight, so if you don't want to meet, I won't hold it against you."

"Oh, fuck off. I'll be there."

He was quiet for a few minutes. We saw Jordan coming back with a plush she'd won from the crane game. "Tom is moving out tomorrow," Jake said.

"Already?" I asked, surprised. I had little interaction with Tom since his graduation. Between my mercurial moods and his apparent preparations for college and life after high school, I just hadn't given much thought to how life would progress for my other cousin. We were never as close, Tom and I. He told me to go play with my dolls once when he was about Jordan's age. Would have made me about nine. I know he didn't really mean much by it. It wasn't really mean, or misogynistic. He was doing his thing and he just didn't know what girls did for fun. But he assumed that I wouldn't enjoy a video game and seven years later, I don't think I'd ever really forgiven him for it.

"Yeah, he's moving in with Ronnie and Zoe, and another guy whose name I can never remember."

"Does Aunt Jean know he's moving in with his girlfriend?"

"Oh, she knows. She is not happy about it, but she knows Tom's eighteen."

"What are we talking about?" Jordan asked.

"Your face," I said, in the voice I reserved for teasing. "No, Tom is moving into his new place tomorrow."

"Oh," she said. I wondered how that registered for her. Ironically, I think she had more in common with Jake in this situation. Both of them had experience being the younger sibling. And Jordan knew that someday I would move out, hopefully. But I didn't have that. I was the oldest in my family, and I just didn't have the same outlook on it. I probably had a bit of insight into Tom's head, actually. No younger sibling all up in your business, parents kept at arm's length, that stuff had appeal. Being financially responsible for rent, deposit, and utilities, that I was less keen on, obviously.

Eventually, Cassie and Sara emerged from their own movie, and we finally got on our way. Jake dropped me and my sisters off at the house and the second I had all the beach stuff unloaded, he took off to get Cassie home. He had maybe twenty or thirty minutes with his girlfriend before she had to be home and I honestly did not want to know just how close the two of them were getting.

Mom was home already when I got in. Weekends are odd for lawyers. There was no court on weekends, and Mom was finally in a point in her career that the amount of work she had to do on weekends was compressed. It was part of why her Fridays were usually so late. She tried very hard not to have to go into the office for anything on Sundays. Sometimes, it was unavoidable, of course. Assistant District Attorneys are rather important, so when things come up, they come up. But for the most part, that was rare.

She ordered Chinese, and my sisters and I all went up to shower. I through the beach towels and swimsuits in the laundry. Even just having got back from the movie theater, my sisters were easily talked into watching another with Mom. We watched the live action Emma Watson version ofBeauty and the Beast through OnDemand.

After the movie, my sisters told Mom about their day, that I dragged them to the library. She raised an eyebrow when she heard we spent a large part of the day with Tobias, but she didn't say anything.

I went up to my room and went to bed at nine. It was early for me, but I told Mom I just wasn't feeling great. I set an alarm for twelve thirty. I was a pretty light sleeper, especially given the frequency of my nightmares, so I wasn't worried about missing the rendezvous in the woods. But it had been a long day, and I figured I should sleep while I could.

The alternative was to spend the next three hours alone in my room. Alone inside my own head, I had bad company.

* * *

I woke up twenty minutes before my alarm. The nightmares seemed to not be entirely gone, but mostly. I didn't dream about being a bear, or getting shot. I didn't really even fully dream. You know the ones where you're half-awake? It was like that. I dreamt that I was drowning, pulled down into black crushing water. What woke me up, though, was that at some point in the dream, it felt like I was lying on warm sand. The sensation of my body settling on the bottom was enough for my eyes to open, and for just a second, I thought I was on the beach again.

I had gone from post-traumatically reliving my near-death experience to a creeping dread and apprehension about the future. And the really messed up part is I was happy about it. I would much rather be afraid of tomorrow than afraid of yesterday. At least I could do something about the tomorrows.

I flipped off the alarm. Last thing I needed was my mom coming in to check on the why my alarm was going off after I left. Oh, yeah, the shit would hit the fan if she found out I was sneaking out of the house at night. Sneaking back in wearing my yoga pants and a sports bra, I might possibly be able to bullshit that I went out for a midnight jog or something, but it wasn't a card I wanted to play.

I was getting a little too used to morphing into an owl at night. Opening my bedroom window, changing into morphable clothing, casually overwriting my human DNA to become a bird… Just another day in the life of an Animorph.

Ugh, great, now I was using the name Marco had given us. I think he meant it sarcastically, probably. Short for animal morphers, I guess it was as good as anything, really. Five idiot teens with a death wish. That was the other label he had put on our little collective, but for some reason, that just didn't roll of the tongue as easily.

I was next to last to arrive, even though Marco was in all likelihood not yet off work yet. Tobias sat by himself on one side of the fire, and Jake and Cassie were snuggling on the other log. I grabbed one of the blankets from the tent after I demorphed and draped it around me before sitting next to Tobias. Cassie looked like she might have been asleep with her head in Jake's lap. It was sickeningly sweet, really.

"Missed you at the movies," I said to Tobias.

He laughed. "No, you didn't. Oh, here."

He handed me his cell phone, and I scrolled through the photos he had open, and saw dozens of shots of the finished mermaid. She looked nearly perfect. The meticulously carved scales, the striations he carved into her hair, the way he sculpted her arm across her chest to cover her breasts. He had added more details, so that she was petting a sea turtle. And he had painstakingly cleared and leveled the sand around the whole thing and filled it with just enough water to make it look like she was closer to the surf than she really was.

The tide would come in and wash out the whole thing, but he had photos of Jordan and Sara working on it, and photos of me, too. He had a good day, and he'd had it with us. That made me feel better.

"Damn, that came out nice," I said.

"Yeah, I was rather pleased with myself by the time I was done."

"Jake, did you see this?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I saw it earlier. I wish I had talent."

Cassie didn't even open her eyes, but she slapped Jake on the leg. "You have many talents," she said, eyes still closed.

"Any snacks this time?" I asked.

"No," Tobias said. "Not tonight, sorry."

"Marco and I had been talking about going camping," Jake said. "It might give us a good alibi, for one thing. But definitely going to have to order some stuff from Amazon."

"Hey, I'm trying to stop Tobias from living in the woods," I said. "I don't need you making the woods more comfortable."

Tobias laughed. "I'm not living here, guys. Really."

Jake shrugged. "I don't mean for you, bud. I mean if this is gonna be a regular hangout spot, we might want to invest in some more permanent features."

"Yeah," I scoffed. "Let's camouflage a cabin and set up some solar panels."

"Hmm, you know, that's not a bad idea…"

" Tobias!"

‹Owl inbound,› we heard Marco as he approached.

When Marco was demorphed and dressed, there was a beat of silence before we started. I dared a glance at the comm array, wondering if Aximili would snub our attempts to help again.

"We'll get there," Jake said. "So, I think Marco brought me up to speed on the library end of things. And Cassie, you're good on it."

She was sitting up now, looking apprehensive. She nodded. "I told Rachel that we might have some other options for depth. Sharks, squid."

"That would take out some danger element," Tobias said. "Morph something that can actually breathe underwater."

Marco nodded. "And to the point Tobias made last night, a shark would be smaller than Elfangor's ship. It would have to be able to fit through a door somewhere."

"I still lean toward the whale, though," I said. Jake raised an eyebrow. "I'm not sure about you guys, but petting a great white is not my idea of fun."

"I'll second that," Tobias said. "But I will hedge that the same website that mentioned sperm whales in the Farallones also mentioned white sharks too."

"Okay, so that seems to be our goal," Jake said. "How do we get there?"

Cassie made a pensive face. "We don't have any gulls at the moment," she said. "Injured seals and marine animals don't come our way. They send those cases to the Monterey Bay Aquarium."

"Oh, great," Jake said. "I'm going to jump ahead and just assume we're breaking in to the Aquarium now."

"That sounds like a good mentality, Jake," I said. "What do they have there?"

"What don't they have?" Cassie countered. "I mean we only need to go like thirty miles offshore, right?"

"Well, I'm not parking in San Fransisco," Jake said. "We'll have to leave from here."

"So a bird then," Cassie said. "They have a Laysan albatross. That would probably be handy to have at sea anyway. Good safety net in case…"

"In case we get stranded at sea," Marco said.

"Yeah, that. Um, what else. Oh, they have California sea lions and Pacific common dolphin. And of course there are the sea otters…"

"So we're making a shopping list, now?" I said.

"Hey, you guys asked."

"We'll get all of them," Jake said. "We don't know what's going to come in handy, I think having some choices isn't a bad idea."

Just like that, we had committed ourselves to a mission. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that eventually we were going to have to make another trip to the zoo for other morphs.

"Alright," Jake said. "If we're going to do this, let's do it. Tobias, try Aximili again, see if he picks up this time."

I waited with bated breath as Tobias went through the checklist. Tobias put his hands up and stepped back from the machine. It was on. "Aximili, if you can hear us, we need to talk to you," he said.

Nothing.

Marco groaned in frustration. Minutes dragged on. I was starting to get annoyed that he was ignoring us, but suddenly the bizarre psychic hologram technology kicked in and we could see Aximil standing before us.

Andalites are hard to describe. They have something of a rough centaur look to them. They have four legs ending in something similar to hooves, and if you saw him from a distance, you might mistake him for a deer - assuming you somehow missed the fact that his fur was blue. He had a bizarre upper torso, like an overdeveloped neck or something. He had dextrous arms, but they looked more like the front limbs of a kangaroo or a rabbit more than human arms and had too many fingers. His face was almost beyond description. Bright green eyes, that's one of the first things you notice. Four of them. Two were more or less where eyes are supposed to be. Two more sat on flexible stalks, like a snail, but not so squishy. He had the ears of a fox or a bat, and no mouth. Yeah, no mouth. That's the other thing you notice about an Andalite face. Where the mouth would be is Just a series of vertical slits.

‹Yes,› he said in the familiar telepathy of Andalites, the same thought-speech we could use in-morph. ‹I am here.›

Okay. So far, so good. Definitely way better than last time.

"How are you doing?" Cassie asked.

Aximili turned a stalk eye toward her, but he hadn't really decided which of us he wanted to look at. His gaze shifted from one to the other. ‹Which of you is the leader?› he asked.

One by one, all of us looked at Jake.

"Oh, really? " he asked. "That's how this is gonna be?"

‹What is it that you wish to discuss?›

I looked at him like I didn't understand the question. I wasn't sure I understood where he was going with this. It seemed kind of obvious with him trapped why we wanted to call.

"We wanted to talk to you about your situation," Jake said. "Elfangor didn't really have any solid ideas on how to reach you and we're not really sure how to handle this either."

Aximili narrowed. ‹Did you really think this would work?› he asked.

"That what would work?" I asked.

‹You insult my intelligence if you think that I would divulge my location to Controllers.›

"Wait, what?" Tobias asked.

"Why would you think we're Controllers?" Cassie asked.

‹Please, the performance is tiring. You tell me my brother, a great warrior of repute, was captured by Yeerks, but expect me not to notice there are suddenly humans with knowledge of Andalite communication relays. You are not surprised to see an Andalite, a creature not of your world. Do not insult my intelligence, Yeerks.›

I looked at the others, then back at Aximili. "We're not Controllers, we're friends of your brother…" I trailed off, as I noticed Aximili was staring me down with all four of his eyes. "Oh, for fuck's sake," I said. "Elfangor never told you about us, did he?"

All of us had similar reactions. Marco put his hands up in a sign of frustration, Jake just dropped his head into his hands, and Tobias actually laughed. "Oh, Elfangor, you damn psychopath."

Cassie tried to calm us down. She turned to the psychic hologram among us. "We aren't Controllers. We found Elfangor when he landed on this planet," she said. "He was hurt, and we helped him. I still have the shirt I used to dress his wound."

‹Elfangor told me that he managed to morph out of his injuries. He would not have needed any assistance. As though any simple human could help him.›

Marco had had it. "Listen, you little shit! I didn't want to be here! I wanted to be done. I wanted to pull your ungrateful ass out of that fucking tin can as a favor to… to your brother." He still couldn't say the name. "I do not have time for your horseshit. We have to figure out how we're getting you and what morphs we need, and the sooner you pull your head out your ass, the sooner I can punch you in the fucking face."

Aximili seemed very taken aback by Marco's verbal attack, all of us were, but he found one word that surprised him. ‹Morphs…?›

"Yes," I said. "Morphs. Your brother gave us the ability with the cube thing. The… what was it? The Escafil device?"

If we'd shot him, Aximili could not be more surprised. ‹No, no, no. That is not remotely possible. You are lying.›

When he had given us the ability to morph, when we had all gathered in Cassie's barn to touch the glowing blue cube, Elfangor told us that it was illegal for him to share his Andalite technology with humans. I guess some kind of Prime Directive shit. Elfangor had, presumably, never told his brother about us or the fact that he'd broken Andalite law. I suppose lying to Aximili had been prudent at the time. I don't know, maybe he had planned to come back after all. I couldn't see him fucking this up this badly on purpose. This was definitely a situation he had intended to handle on his own… without us.

"Enough of this," Tobias said. He stood up, and fetched one of the canisters. He held it up to Aximili. "You know what's in this can, don't you?" Aximili didn't nod, made no outward indication of assent, but the way he froze when he saw the canister was telling. A cadet, a glorified Boy Scout, he had no real experience. We did. Not much, but more than he did. And he had zero poker face. "Look, Aximili, you don't want to trust us, I get it. But I also know your coordinates right now. Thirty-two point five degrees north, hundred twenty-seven point eight degrees west. You're less than two thousand feet down."

I have no idea if Aximili understood longitude and latitude, but it was plainly clear that he believed Tobias did in fact know his location. Or he was very close.

Jake stood up. He put a hand on Tobias's shoulder. "Good job, T. Aximili, we know where you are. If we're Controllers, we have your brother's things, we have the Escafil device, and we know where you are. Which means if we're Controllers, you're fucked."

Aximili laughed. ‹I think not, Yeerk. There is no Escafil device, Yeerk. Whatever Elfangor told you, that container is probably empty. You do have my brother's personal effects. But you need an Andalite to open them, don't you?›

Jake's face darkened. "The only other Andalite on Earth - that we know of - is Visser Three," he said. Visser Three, the Andalite-Controller that had killed Elfangor. Jake, in his recon mission down to the pool, had been the first of us to see him. Elfangor had been shocked to the core. Apparently - and we still lacked details - Elfangor and his superior officer Alloran had come to Earth together years ago, and Alloran had been been left behind and subsequently infested by the Yeerks.

There was a story there, for sure, but I didn't know what it was.

"Okay, look," Jake continued. "You can keep playing this game to make yourself look tough or whatever. I would rather not see this can fall into the hands of the one that killed my friend, would you?"

Aximili looked like he wanted to kill all of us. Either because he thought us his enemies or because we had moved on to deliberately pushing his buttons. I didn't care, honestly. My first experience with Aximili, and I didn't think much of the shit.

"Now, the other idea on the table is that we are five random kids that just happened to chance on your brother when he crashed. We thought he was a shooting star at first. A meteorite. He morphed something after Cassie stopped the bleeding. Small, looked like it had six wings. Kinda like a bird, if you know what birds are. It was something from your world."

‹A kafit,› Ax said softly. Like he was afraid even that much would somehow be helping the enemy.

The change started slowly at first, then increased. Orange and black fur spread over Jake's face. His teeth bulged obscenely in his mouth as his nose flattened and protruded. In less than two minutes, he was a tiger. ‹This is something from our world,› he said. ‹You know that I'm not lying. You see that I can morph. And we don't need your DNA to open the canister.›

He paused, like he wasn't sure he wanted to say the next part or not. ‹Before he died, your brother let us acquire him. I have morphed an Andalite before. I never want to do it again. Now that he's gone it just seems… disrespectful,doesn't it? So whether you trust us or not, that's really immaterial. We're coming to get you with or without your help. You're the one stuck there, not us. So you get to decide what you want to do. You are the last free Andalite on the planet. Do you really want to die down there?›

Aximili seemed either defeated or embarrassed. Maybe both. ‹What do you need from me?›


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

* * *

"We need to ask you questions about the dome ship," Marco said.

That was not the thing to tell him. His cooperation seemed very tenuous at best, and Marco's statement put him back into paranoia mode. ‹And I suppose I have no choice but to give you all the technical data in the ship's main computers?›

He was convinced, even after Jake had morphed in front of him, that we were not who we said we were.

"Great, Marco, now he thinks we want to steal his ship," I said. The second I said it, I realized that didn't make any sense. As Jake and Tobias had illustrated, it didn't really matter if we were Controllers; he could either cooperate with us or die down there. It was grim, and it was callous, but the fact of the matter was that his situation was already dire. And in a very short time, he was going to graduate from dire to full-blown emergency. Aximili was being very, very defensive about a ship that couldn't fly. Our entire interest in this ship - to that point, at least - had been retrieving the only known Andalite survivor. I had to ask. "Aximili, we're a rescue party. Our only interest here is you."

‹So you say.›

"See," I continued, "it's that kind of defensiveness that seems to imply there's a lot more on that ship than just you. Something on that ship is so important that you'd rather die down there than risk a Controller finding it."

Everyone looked at me, and then turned back to the psychic projection of Aximili. There was a shadow of Elfangor there. His expression was enigmatic, but I thought he was scowling at me.

‹What kind of information do you need regarding the ship?› Yeah, that wasn't a subtle change of subject. He was hiding something.

"Dude," Tobias said, "I don't need your code clearance or anything like that. We just want to know how big the doors are." For a flash, I was mad at him. I felt I was onto something, something important, and Tobias was letting him out of it. But he winked at me. He agreed with me. But I was pushing, and I wasn't helping. Let Aximili tell us what he wanted to tell us. For now.

‹The doors?› He seemed confused by the question.

"The morph we have in mind, it's kinda on the large side."

That really piqued his interest. ‹You intend to morph to reach this depth?›

"Uh, yeah," Tobias said gracefully. "Elfangor said something about trying to steal a Bug Fighter, but we can't really get into the Yeerk communication channels. This is the only thing he left that any of us can use. And it's not like we have a submarine lying around either."

‹What manner of creature could reach this depth?› he asked.

Cassie spent about ten minutes talking about sperm whales. Marco had taken the whale book to work, and Jake gave it to her when he dropped her off. This actually, more than anything else so far, seemed to put Aximili at some form of ease. Maybe it was the passion Cassie had for animals. Maybe it was just the shift in topics, or even just talking about morphing was something more familiar to him. Maybe he just found the description of an alien animal interesting. Everything here was not of his world, and Jake reminded us that Andalites hate the dark. That life could exist in the abyss beyond his dome, I could see how that would make his situation a tad less scary.

Or not. ‹What kind of planet is this?›

"This is Earth," I said, frustrated. "It's kind of a rough neighborhood."

"Look, the whale can reach your depth," Cassie finished, "but it's sixty feet long. It's bigger than Elfangor's ship, so we don't know what will work to get in there."

Aximili seemed to think about that. ‹I do not know.›

That was just perfect. "What do you mean you don't know?" I asked.

‹I…› he was flummoxed now, which was admittedly a welcome shift from the obstinance we had seen moments ago, but at least he had confidence. This didn't bode well. ‹I have never been permitted on the flight deck,› he said at last.

That was both infuriating and hilarious. I didn't know whether to laugh or scream and instead I just buried my face in my hands and sighed. He was a glorified Boy Scout. He was in-training. And he didn't know what he was doing anymore than we did.

Jake was always the practical one. "Um, do you think you could go take a look?"

Ax sighed, almost depressed. ‹I do not have the clearances to open the doors. Only my brother and his senior officers could do so.›

"Well, look," Tobias said, "Elfangor left all this stuff. Will any of this help… I mean, can you access any of this through the comm array?" He gestured to the stacks of canisters that he, Jake, and Elfangor had carried out of the ship.

‹I can try. I make no promises.›

Aximili tried very carefully to explain to us how Andalite computers worked. He failed miserably. The only one of us that really had any coding knowledge was Marco, and he was as lost as any of us. Andalite computers are advanced as hell, which should be fitting for a society that has mastered interstellar space travel. But you don't need to understand electronics, coding, or 3D modeling to play an XBox - you just need to find the HDMI ports. So while we understood zilch about the underlying technology, hooking it up was slightly easier. Slightly. The canisters were tricky, and apparently they were meant to open in different ways depending on what they were connecting to.

It took more than half an hour before we finished.

Aximili informed us that the data transfer would be slow. Not that the computer couldn't handle instant transference, but that for security purposes, everything was run through triple encryption and all files had to download twice to ensure zero transmission loss. When Andalites received messages, they would come through perfectly or else the ship computer would assume it was being hacked and terminate the data exchange and lock out the cycle.

And since five teenagers and an alien cadet are apparently doomed to learn things the hard way, I'll give you three guesses what happened. The comm array went black and it took my eyes a moment to readjust to the firelight in the absence of the blue light.

"Shit!" Marco blurted.

"Hold on, let me see if we can do anything." Tobias went over the notes he'd taken, one by one. He went through the shut down procedure just in case, like turning a circuit all the way off from overload before you turn it back on.

The comm array flickered, almost like lag in a webcam, but we did get Aximili back… for about thirty seconds. ‹Configure… seven… turn the…›

And nothing.

"Um, did we ask how long a cycle was?" Marco asked.

"No," Jake said. "I think we should have. Elfangor said a day on his planet is forty-some hours."

"Did he say seven?" Cassie asked.

I nodded. "I thought so, anyway."

"Could be seven minutes, seven hours," Marco said. "It could have cut off. Seventeen, twenty-seven. Configure seven degrees to the left. We can what-if all night, but it'd be a waste of time. Just no way to know."

"It's already late enough," Jake said. "Cassie, I'm off tomorrow, but I have to help Tom move. I might be over later if that's cool. Tobias, feel like giving me a hand tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I'll be there. Unless this starts working again."

"You're sleeping here again, aren't you?" I asked.

"Well… yeah. I mean, he could call back right?"

"Rachel, we'll talk about Tobias's sylvan lifestyle later, but it's not a bad idea. Everyone else needs to get home, though. Meet again here tomorrow. Marco, you work first shift, right?"

"Yeah, same hours you had today. Be off at four."

"Okay, I don't think we can all be together out here till after nightfall, so let's say eleven? Earlier than our usual, late enough that parents and siblings should be asleep. Text if there are any changes."

We all got ready to go. Cassie handed Tobias a portable cell phone battery and took an identical one. She set it on the log she'd been sitting on, and when she was fully morphed to owl, I watched her grab it in her talons before taking off.

"External batteries, huh?" I asked.

"Yeah, they come in really handy," he said, plugging his phone into it.

"Jake get those?" I asked, not sure why I was stalling. I guess I just didn't want to go home for some reason. Or maybe I just didn't want him to be all alone.

"No, I… uh, I shoplifted them from Wal-Mart."

I smiled. I knew it was stupid. Shoplifting isn't cool. Well… maybe. I mean, Wal-Mart is a horrible company. Every other day, you see something about their shitty labor practices. I know it doesn't really validate shoplifting. Still, he was using them for the human resistance against a hostile alien invasion. That had to count as something. Or maybe I just envied him that he did something exciting.

"Wondering if we should steal wetsuits," I blurted.

I hadn't meant to say it aloud, but Tobias just laughed. "These things are like ten or twenty bucks. I got the cheap ones from the impulse purchase shelf. Wal-Mart isn't going to miss a couple bucks. But a wetsuit? Marco told me a good one is fifty bucks, and they can go for over a hundred. Even if we could get away with it - and I know we could - some store manager or owner would take a hit on it."

I saw where he was going. "Plus, we don't know everyone's sizes… And if we boosted them from a local store, we might be noticed with them at some point. I guess it's a stupid idea."

"No, it's not stupid at all. We could - no, never mind."

"Care to share?"

He only shrugged. "I'd rather not say. Stupid to even think of it."

Red flags, Rachel. Don't need to be part of this. This is not a good idea. That's what I was supposed to think. Instead, what I said was, "Maybe I could help."

"You don't know what I have in mind," he said.

"It doesn't matter. We need wetsuits, and I don't want a roundtable discussion about how stealing is wrong."

"You really think they'll make a big deal out of it?" he asked. He had that odd tone to his question he had sometimes. Like he was asking me if life was really that bad.

I sighed. "Jake doesn't like to break rules. Cassie is really… She wouldn't like it, y'know? Morals. She's better than me that way."

He smiled. "You're not the amoral type, Rachel."

That was true. I'd always played things safe. Mostly. I liked lacrosse because it let me cut loose a bit. I liked to go running to blow off steam. But I didn't really ever change lanes. Never made waves. Maybe that's what I needed. "Maybe not," I said. "But I am pragmatic. What's your idea?"

"The easiest way to get anything is to buy it," he said. "So the real issue is stealing cash."

I frowned. "You're not morphing an elephant and stealing an ATM are you?"

He laughed. "No, nothing like that. But the thing about my uncle is I know a lot of people that have cash and can't really call the cops about it."

"You want to rob car thieves?"

He nodded. Morally, I didn't know what to make of it. Was it wrong to steal from thieves? I shook my head. No, it was a very bad idea. We had already stolen a car. And his uncle was already in some kind of paranoid meltdown. Tobias was the most likely of all of us to suffer blowback. "I'm not sure that's a good idea," I said.

He gave a noncommittal shrug, and I knew he didn't really care if I helped him or not. If Tobias wanted to rip off his uncle, I had no problem with that. He had it coming, far as I was concerned. Better to lose a couple hundred to the nephew he was supposed to be taking care of than have some pissed-off teenagers call the cops.

I morphed back to owl. The process was pretty repetitive, and while morphing something new was always an experience, it was a bit disconcerting how quickly becoming a bird seemed to be no big thing. It was something we had done too many times, and something we were starting to do rather casually.

A bird can go places a person can't. One of those facts that everyone knows, but information that is generally useless. Birds don't rob chop shops. But, well, we could if we wanted to. Even caught on security cameras, what could a cop do if the perpetrator was a bird?

I didn't fly home. I knew I should, and I knew the longer I was out, the less sleep I was going to get. Not to mention the fact that I was probably going to go help Tom pack up the moving truck tomorrow.

Ah, to move out, be free. Nothing like being a bird to make you appreciate freedom. On the wing, soaring above the lights of Santa Cruz below, I was perfectly unbound. No sisters demanding my attention. No homework, no lacrosse practice. Just the perfect serenity of the air rushing through my wings, the light of a full moon reflecting off the Monterey Bay. And yes, the constant interspersed predatory instincts of an owl looking for prey were a thing, but it didn't bother me enough to detract from the experience.

The more I let myself dwell on thoughts of freedom, though, the more I found myself wondering what I would even do with it. The great dichotomy about being a post-Millennial is that I'm aware that college is one of those inescapable things you have to do, but simultaneously cynical enough to understand exactly how much student loans are going to screw me over. Lacrosse was fun. I loved it, I was damned good at it, and I was confident that I could play my way to college. I had the grades, I was smart, but college had always been the end goal. I had never really thought about a major.

Maybe sports science or sports medicine, something like that. I was already something of a gym rat. During lacrosse season, I spent a lot of time at Planet Fitness, putting miles on a treadmill or a stationary bike. I could see myself as a personal trainer, maybe a lacrosse coach. Maybe I'd go for soccer in the fall.

And that was just the normal stuff. It didn't account for the alien shit that we were doing. Two years. Two years before the Andalites arrived. And we had yet to discuss what we were going to do with an Andalite. Our camp in the Moore Creek Preserve had yet to be discovered, but I was aware it was illegal. Tobias was the next best thing to squatting on public land, we were all violating some kind of U. S. Forestry laws, and the preserve was laced with hiking and biking trails.

My outlook for the next two years was impossibly cloudy, and while flying aimlessly didn't help any of those unanswered questions, it did offer me a little respite from the stress of unresolved problems.

Without really thinking about it, I had drifted back to the library. I guess put on autopilot, I just followed familiar streets or replayed my day, I don't know. I was about to turn and fly home when something caught my eye.

There was a car parked at a house a few blocks from the library. That wasn't the weird part. The weird part is that I saw stickers in the rear windshield, and they looked identical to the window stickers Sara had put in my dad's Mazda. It's strange how sometimes your brain turns away from logical conclusions. I told myself that there must be hundreds of kids that had those window stickers. And there had to be how many Mazda CX-9s in the county. I told myself that owls couldn't see color very well. It could have been any shade of blue, maybe green even. There was no way to tell if it was the cobalt blue that my dad owned.

But while owl eyes don't pick up color very well, there's very little else they miss. I landed in a tree nearby, and I saw the luggage in the back. I knew my dad's suitcase, his executive bag. I saw the airport tag hanging from the rearview mirror. The stainless steel travel mug I bought him for Father's Day rested in the cupholder.

This was Dad's car.

He was back from Denver, his flight had gotten in. And he was at some house by the library instead of being home.

It took me a long moment to figure out why he was there. I'm not naïve. Really, I'm not. When it comes to sex, I knew more than I wanted to know. I was sixteen, and I knew I wasn't ready yet. And I hated how I knew that, but that didn't matter in the moment. What mattered is that I thought enough of my father, of Dad, that the obvious reason his car was here well after midnight just didn't enter my head. It's like reality was knocking on a heavy oak door, begging me to open up and let it in.

My dad was cheating on my mom.

The text he'd sent earlier, telling us his flight was delayed… He knew he was going to be late because he already planned on it.

I didn't see my dad in the house. I thank heaven for that. There are things no girl should ever see, things no father should ever show their daughter. But the owl eyes penetrated the picture window, and I saw the portrait on the wall behind a sofa. I recognized that face. I had seen it almost every single day the last nine months. She was pretty. I remember thinking that the first time I had met her.

My father was sleeping with Sara's first grade teacher.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

* * *

Daylight woke me. I tried to wipe the sleep from my eyes, but it felt heavy and hung like a thick fog. There was a blissful few moments as my brain sluggishly tried to re-engage that I didn't remember why my eyes were sore, or why my pillowcase was wet, and why I was sleeping in yoga pants.

Then the night before replayed in my mind. A day ago, my only real concern had been Aximili. And now I really wished that was still the case. I had flown home in a fury of feathers, beating my wings as hard as I could. All I'd wanted to do was scream, and I had no problem letting the owl screech at full volume as I passed house after house below. Sickeningly, I wondered absently if my dad had heard me through the window.

I felt numb, and I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't find any other thing to focus on. Not the dome ship, not the fried comm array. Not even Tobias and his Robin Hood plan.

All I could think about was that my father was cheating. I knew, I knew about it and I couldn't do anything about it.

When I got home and finally soared through my bedroom window, I thought the familiarity of being in my own body in my own bedroom would be comforting, but it wasn't. When I was demorphed, and I saw my room in the dim amber light of my reading light, I couldn't take it. I felt so small. I thought I was ready to be a grown-up, but I suddenly found myself just a little girl again. I wanted my mommy, and the more I wanted to be comforted, the more my mind railed against where my father was.

I fell asleep sobbing into my pillow. That was how I woke up with puffy eyes,still wearing the clothes I'd used to morph and I had to change into something more appropriate before brushing my teeth. I didn't like the look of my face in the mirror.

My dad was in the kitchen at the breakfast nook. My sisters ran to him with their twin screams of "Daddy!" echoing off the walls.

I wanted to throw up. And my throat hurt from crying. It had taken all of my will last night not to wail, to suppress all my rage into silent sobs, and the only thing that kept me from yelling at him the moment I saw him was that I just couldn't find my voice.

I looked at my father like he was a stranger. I was glad I didn't look like him. My dad is a darker blond than me and my mom, and he was just starting to grey at the temples. My sisters had his hair color, though, and I suddenly hated it. But they didn't really look that much like him. He kept his hair short, easily manageable. Probably made it just a little easier to travel so much. He looked a bit like Matt Damon, at least my mom liked to think so.

He had apparently gone out to McDonald's for a family breakfast. Hashbrowns, Egg McMuffins, McGriddles, oatmeal cups, and breakfast burritos, not to mention a full complement of coffee.

"I wasn't sure what you guys would be in the mood for," he said, "so I got a buffet here."

I rolled my eyes and sighed. That was kinda typical of Dad. He had three daughters, and it was impossible for him to remember which of us liked what. Sometimes, it really stung. Other times, like this morning, it was just a dad thing, and that hurt even more.

I didn't want to accept anything from him. I didn't want to take anything he gave me. But I was on too little sleep, too much stress, and between crying myself to sleep and morphing being energetically draining, I was starving. I grabbed two sausage and egg burritos, a hash brown, and an oatmeal. McDonald's coffee always seems way too bitter for me, so I took the lid off, put some sugar in a mug, and poured it half full. I topped it off with milk.

"That's a lot of food, Dan," Mom said, coming down the stairs.

"I haven't eaten since about four o'clock yesterday."

He went on to tell us that while the business trip had gone well, his experience at the Denver airport had not. According to Dad, he had ended up stuck in Denver for about four hours before getting another flight, and then the two-and-a-half hour flight from Denver to San Jose. It was impossible not to think of the last time I had been at the San Jose international airport, either, so I tried to ignore the shiver that ran down my spine and bury the images of that Dracon beam flash that had crippled my bear morph. By the time he got his luggage and got back to his car, it was after midnight.

I listened to him lie to my mother and sisters, to me, right to our faces. He lied that he got in super late, that he passed out on the couch for a bit, but woke up starving and went out to grab breakfast. His face gave nothing away. He smiled the way he always smiled. If he felt guilty about what he was doing, it didn't show.

I knew immediately that my dad had just gotten home. He had spent all night cheating on Mom with Miss Franklin. I almost choked on my coffee when my brain decided to ask whether or not Dad got a gold star last night. If I hadn't been a bird on the wing, if I hadn't just happened by the library, I wouldn't know any different. He said he loved us, and yet he lied to us effortlessly.

"Still not feeling well?" my mom asked.

I would have laughed if I could have. I said I wasn't feeling well last night. Now I had woken up with puffy eyes and wasn't talking to anyone. I hadn't said a word since I'd gotten up. My lie was different than my father's lies. I knew that immediately. Objectively, they were different. I had to do something important, something I had to keep secret. But the fact that I had my own secrets and lies, formed a knot in my stomach.

I didn't want to have anything in common with the man that bought us breakfast. "I'm fine," I lied, trying not to sound hoarse. "Just a little under the weather, maybe."

"Well," she said, sipping her still-too-hot coffee, "try to pace yourself today. We have to go help your cousin move today."

"Oh, crap," my dad said, "I completely forgot about Tom today. I was so wrapped up in the airport drama… What time is the truck getting there?"

Tom, his girlfriend Zoey, and one of his friends from the basketball team that was also going to UCSC, had all pooled together to rent a U-Haul truck for the day. They had to hit three houses, then their new apartment, and it was going to be a big day, even with twenty-four-hour drop-off.

"Not till twelve, maybe one. I'm sure I'll hear from Jeanie before the truck gets there. Go lay down, try to get some sleep for a few hours. Tom, Jake, and Steve won't be able to do all this without you."

Dad shook his head. "He took up less than a hundred fifty square feet for the last eighteen years, Nikki. We're moving a desk, a dresser, a few bags of laundry, and a computer."

"It's his first apartment, dear. He has furniture to pick up at Goodwill."

"Yeah, that's a good point. Ugh, remember our first apartment?"

"Omigod, don't start. Remember that old sofa?"

He stood there eating breakfast, casually reminiscing with my mother about the early days of their relationship after spending the night cheating on her. I couldn't take it anymore.

"I'm going to go see Jake for a bit," I said.

"Rachel?" Mom asked.

I shrugged. "Oh, please. You know Aunt Jeanette is going to be in her kitchen all morning making sandwiches and packing dinners for Tom to throw in his new fridge. Jake is going to do that thing where he doesn't know how to say good-bye or have big boy emotions, and I bet you anything Uncle Steve is still asleep. Dad needs to get some sleep after his trip and it'll be quieter without us here."

Dad laughed. "Good call."

"Do you think Jean needs your sisters underfoot?"

"Jordan can help make sandwiches, I'll help Jake and Tom organize some stuff, and Sara will watch Netflix in Jake's room like she always does."

"Oh, let the girls go, Nikki. We can go back to sleep for awhile."

I chugged my coffee to clear the taste of bile from my mouth.

I drove my mom's Honda over to Jake's. I didn't want anything to do with the Mazda, which was too bad since it was the more fun to drive. Jake and I don't live very far apart anyway.

When we pulled up, Tom was moving boxes to the curb. He smiled and waved at us. Tom looks like a taller but lankier version of Jake. His hair was cut shorter than Jake's and you knew just looking at him that he played basketball. He was wearing his high school jersey, too, so that helped. Jake came out carrying a desk like an oversized basket of laundry. He couldn't wave but he smiled and nodded.

I unbuckled and my sisters followed. I wanted to tell Jake what I wished I didn't know, but I couldn't. Not now, not here. Was Jake even the one I should be telling? I knew my parents argued sometimes, and I was sure that was true of everyone's parents, but I just didn't see my aunt and uncle having the same kind of drawn-out rows that my parents did. Could Jake even really conceive of marital strife?

"Anything still need packed?" I asked.

"Nah," Tom said. "I packed everything but my bed yesterday. Just a matter of moving everything out to the curb."

"Okay, you and Jake need a hand?"

Tom shook his head. "Honestly, I think more than two people, we're just going to be stepping over each other. Just stay out of the living room for now, okay?"

When we opened the door, I was a little taken aback. Half the furniture in the living room had been moved so that there was as much open floor space as possible. Once things got downstairs, it was more or less a straight shot out the door. Of course, moving stuff from the upstairs bedroom and down… oh, whatever. If they didn't want my help, fine. Less work for me.

Just as predicted, I found Aunt Jean cooking. She had three saucepans simmering on the stove, a stack of tupperware containers on the counter, while she had turned the kitchen island into a sandwich station. Aunt Jeanette was pretty, dark hair, tied back in a ponytail. She almost looked like Jake's big sister more than his mother.

"What are we making?" I asked, ready to volunteer.

"Oh, hey, sweetie, what brings you here so early?"

I shrugged, half-tempted to tell my psychologist aunt what was bothering me. But of course, I decided to wear the brave face and swallow it like I always did. "Dad got home super late from the airport, so he's getting a nap. Figured you could use some extra hands on deck before the moving truck gets here."

"Aw, that's sweet of you, Rachel. Feel like making some sandwiches?"

Ten minutes later, Jordan and I were making sandwiches while Sara watched TV with Uncle Steve. Uncle Steve was our pediatrician, had been our whole lives, and he was always fun to hang out with. I got my interest in comic books from Uncle Steve. He was the only pediatrician I knew that would wear a Spawn t-shirt to the office. He was valiantly avoiding heavy lifting - he always joked that if he wanted to do stuff himself, he wouldn't have had kids - and Sara was out of the way and having fun, so that was perfect.

Anyway, I let myself get sucked into busy work.

It became immediately clear to Aunt Jeanette that I had almost no clue what to do in a kitchen. "Rachel, don't you know how to cook?" she asked.

"Um, not if the directions aren't printed on the side of the box, no."

"What has your mother been teaching you?"

I shrugged. My mom had always been too busy to really teach me to cook. I didn't phrase it like that, but I gave my aunt an honest answer. "Mom works a lot. When she's home, she likes to spend quality time with us. Movies, game night, shopping."

Aunt Jean made a face. It was a face my mom made, and I was willing to bet folding money that it was a face Grandma made. But while I was sure she was making some kind of mental judgment about her sister, she didn't say anything. Instead, Aunt Jean taught me how to cook.

Okay, fine, that's not really a skill you can learn in a few hours. But she did take her time with me as we made some dinners. The idea was that Tom could live off his fridge for a few days to a week before he had to actually cook for himself. Really, the practicality of it seemed specious at best. Tom could feed himself, after all. And I had to assume he and his housemates had some kind of grocery budget. I think it was just her doing the mom thing, a way of saying goodbye. She wanted him to have home-cooked meals when he left. So I helped her make a meatloaf, beef stew, and two different casseroles. It was nice hanging out in the kitchen.

But my new secretly quietly gnawed at the back of my mind. The more I hung out with her, the more I found the pressure of my crisis increasing in my chest. It was too much and it was not enough. On one hand, this was my Aunt Jean, and she had always been there for me and my sisters. There were more than a few memories of my mom spending a night or two at her sisters. Some of those memories were happy times, I think. Margarita nights, or just sisters being sisters. Some of them, though, were bad nights. Nights Mom had packed us up after school and refused to answer Dad's phone calls. Aunt Jean never seemed to bat an eye about it.

If I told Aunt Jeanette, what would she do? There was an adult question if ever there was one. She was a child psychologist, and I was certain she knew far more about the nature of my parents' marriage dynamic than I did. So on that side of things, I figured she could help me. But on the other hand, she was also Mom's sister, and she knew what it was like to be a wife and mother with a career. If she knew, would she have to tell Mom? And if I made her promise patient confidentiality, wouldn't I just be putting her in the same boat? And as much as I wanted to tell somebody what I knew, I wasn't prepared for it.

Too many questions I couldn't answer, and all of them totally irrelevant in the long run. The real issue, I realized, stirring the stew, was whether or not I wanted Mom to know. Somehow, through all my tempestuous thoughts, I had settled on that one as the one that mattered. And really, that came down to a split dichotomy. Was telling Mom the best solution, or should I put it in a box and pretend I never found out?

Rationally, I thought that was the best solution. There was really only a problem if I made it a problem. Right? Or would it hurt her more if ultimately she found out and learnt I knew and didn't tell her?

Jake came into the kitchen suddenly and grabbed an iced tea from the fridge. He had a decent film of sweat, and his hair clung to his face. He drained the can in one long pull. He exhaled loudly in appreciation of a cold drink after some hard work.

"Smells good, Mom," he said.

"Grab a sandwich. Jordan has been a very good helper."

Jordan beamed brightly, holding a plate of sandwiches to Jake. Once he had one, she took the rest out to the den for Uncle Steve, Tom, and Sara.

"You all done?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's everything. All his clothes are in garbage bags, his dresser is disassembled on the lawn, computer's all boxed up. PlayStation, games, DVDs. Basketball trophies," he sighed a deep relaxing breath.

Aunt Jean started crying then. Jake was just trying to rattle off how much shit he'd had to help move out to the curb, but really he just made it inescapably clear to his mother that her son was almost out the door.

"Oh, mom, I'm sorry, I didn't think." Jake hugged his mom, and she tried to regain her composure.

"I'm okay," she sniffed, wiping her eyes. "God, where do the years go?"

"Well, you got me for another two years, doncha?"

"Yeah, I guess I can keep you a bit longer," Aunt Jean said wistfully. "I need to go find your brother before the truck gets here."

I was alone with Jake for the first time since yesterday. I didn't know what to talk about so I simply asked, "So what happened? I thought Tobias was going to be here."

Jake nodded. "He's on his way. He stayed up too late waiting to see if the comm array started working again."

"That shouldn't surprise me, should it?" I said, nonplussed. Then, without really thinking about it, I added, "We're not going to stop him from living in the woods, are we?"

Jake shrugged. "It bothers you that much?"

"Well, yeah. It doesn't bother you?"

He seemed to take his time for a long beat. He took another bite of his sandwich, then set it down on the counter and got himself a glass of ice water. "No, it doesn't bother me. Not at all."

"How can you be okay with one of your best friends being homeless?"

Jake smiled. It was a sad smile. A Tobias smile. "Rachel, when Tobias is out there in the woods, he is home. He's safe, he has people that care about him. All of his needs are met out there, for now. It's when he goes back to his uncle's apartment that I worry about him."

"You're seriously not gonna do anything, are you?"

"He doesn't need my help, Rachel. He's making his choice, and I'm going to support it. I'm his friend, not his keeper."

Somehow, that resonated with me more than it should have. My dad had made a choice, too, after all. And I sure as hell was not my father's keeper. But I couldn't support that choice.

"Besides," Jake added, "he's not hurting anybody."

Well, that was it, wasn't it. My dad was definitely doing something that hurt my mom, even if she herself didn't know it. I didn't know how, and I didn't know when, but I knew that this was not a secret I could keep. I had to tell her. I kept too many secrets.

Secrets and lies.

Just then, Sara came into the kitchen, half a sandwich in her hand. Moving day didn't seem to mean anything to her yet. I wondered if she realized how big a deal it was. She was only seven years old. She had always had someone to take care of her. I wondered if she understood that Tom was a grown-up now. That at some point, you don't expect a grown-up to do it for you, or to give you the answers. And I was so glad that I wasn't a grown-up yet.

"What's up, Cupcake?" Jake asked.

"Oh, Uncle Steve told me to tell you the moving truck is here."


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

* * *

Ronnie Chambers and his dad had picked up the truck first thing in the morning, and they were visibly tired. Ronnie had driven their grey sedan and followed as his dad drove the truck. Ronnie gave Tom a hug, and in a lot of ways, I guess Ronnie was to Tom what Marco was to Jake. Or what Melissa and Cassie were to me. Ronnie's dad handed the keys to the U-Haul to Uncle Steve and they spent a few minutes talking before he and Ronnie left to go get lunch.

Tobias showed up about ten minutes before my parents did. He got there by bike, and I smiled despite myself. It wasn't Cassie's bike. It was his bike. I guess there was a possibility he had it stashed somewhere in the woods and I hadn't seen it. But I optimistically hoped he'd actually gone back to his apartment. Either way, he'd had a bike ride getting there. Cassie's place was two miles. His apartment building was out by the San Lorenzo river. It was a little closer, but still about a mile and a half. Jake tossed him an iced tea.

We went back to Jake's house. We did a little sweep through Tom's room, made sure he didn't forget anything, and seeing his room bare to the carpet and the four walls, I suddenly had so much more empathy for Aunt Jean. For a long time, as long as I could remember, this had been Tom's room. And everything that had made it Tom's was gone now. Jake told me eventually this was going to become Aunt Jean's home office. That was the plan. But till that happened, it was just a void, a hole in the house that reminded us that Tom didn't live here anymore.

Getting all of Tom's stuff into the moving truck didn't take long. Tobias and Uncle Steve loaded a decent amount of stuff before my mom and dad got there. Even Jordan and Sara helped move the black garbage bags that held Tom's clothes. Dad and Uncle Steve moved the big stuff, the desk, the mattress, and so on. By the time everything was off the curb, Tom and Jake were bushed, which was understandable. I guess part of the reason Uncle Steve avoided moving things out of the house was so that he'd have energy left to work on the harder part, which was going to be moving stuff from the truck into Tom's apartment.

I rode with Uncle Steve in the U-Haul truck. Partly because I was trying to avoid my parents, but also just because. My sisters all got in the Mazda and I tried not to wince. Jake, Tom, and my aunt and uncle all followed in Jake's SUV.

But, the part that I had forgotten, was that we weren't going straight to the new place. First, we were going to Zoe's place to load up her stuff.

Ronnie was already there, apparently dropped off after lunch with his dad. Zoe was the daughter of a single mother, and she had grown up doing things for herself. What I think had really won Tom points in the relationship was that he never treated her like a flower. She was pretty, but she wasn't delicate. She had enough helpers to move her stuff, and Aunt Jean was trying to establish more rapport with her son's now live-in girlfriend. I think at that stage she was just panicking that she was going to be a grandmother before Tom was out of college. It would've been a little funny if I hadn't been in such a mood. I wondered if she'd have the same kind of reaction if Jake and Cassie ever moved in together.

I helped move a vanity, more clothes. Zoe had packed her stuff in plastic tote bins, rather than the trash bags the two boys had used. I smiled, suddenly feeling the need for some girl time. In between trips to the truck, I took a few minutes to text Melissa and Cassie - separately, of course, not in group chat. I didn't tell them anything. I was just trying to see if I could spend the night sometime. It wasn't out of the ordinary for me to set up impromptu sleepovers with my friends, and while more often than not we held them at my house, we hung out at Melissa's place a lot. I had slept over at Cassie's any number of times, but Melissa rarely joined us on those evenings just because she had to wake up so early.

I hoped one of them would get back to me. I really didn't want to spend the night in my own house. If it came to it, I supposed I could always tell my mom I was spending the night with Jake, trying to be a good cousin while he was going through an emotional time. I wondered if Jake would be cool with that.

When the last of Zoe's stuff was in the truck, it was about two thirds full. The last stop - and thankfully I didn't have to go - was to swing past Goodwill to pick up a sofa and some other furniture that Tom and Ronnie had already purchased. My dad refused to drive the U-Haul. Apparently there was a story there, something about when Mom and Dad had moved into our house when I was about two or three, and everyone had a good laugh. For a minute, he was my dad again. He had stories I didn't know, and stories I really wanted to hear. And that made me wince in the bittersweet realization that as much as I wanted to hate him, he was still my dad.

Finally, we hit the last leg of the trip: taking all this shit to the new place. It was just across the river, so actually it wasn't very far from Tobias's place. Tom and his friends, it turned out, were not renting an apartment. They had found a house for rent. It wasn't big, but that wasn't surprising. They didn't really have the price range for big. It was only a single-storey, two-bedroom, one bath house, and it sat on the corner of the block. You noticed immediately that the property values had been dialed down. The sidewalk was cracked, and weeds poked through, but I liked the dandelions. What yard the house had was fenced so that there was basically just a big wooden box acting as a buffer between their rental and the house next door. It had appeal if you had some imagination and could see it for its potential. It was quaint. White stucco walls and brown trim, and it had a little wrap-around garden. Or what could be a garden if someone felt inclined to put the work into it.

But I think Aunt Jean was trying to remember if she'd ever seen the house an an episode of Cops .

Unloading the truck was a much different proposition than loading it had been. There was limited space to unload curbside, for one thing, so everything had to go straight from the truck to the house. And we had stuff from three different people that had to be moved into specific rooms. It was already after three, and I knew it was going to be late by the time we were done. The way we had packed the truck also made unloading it a little challenging. It would have been easier had we left all the big stuff at the back of the truck, but with three houses to hit, that hadn't been practical.

Tom and Ronnie carried their second-hand sofa up to the front door and immediately realized that Zoe was the only one of them smart enough to remember her house key. Aunt Jean almost had a heart attack when she realized Tom and Zoe had bought a queen bed and that the full-sized bed Tom and Jake had painstakingly taken apart and loaded into the van was going to be Ronnie's bed.

But, once the Goodwill furniture was in, it was basically a free for all to just unload the truck as soon as possible. The inside of the house was bright, but a little sterile. It had the typical white walls of rental properties and the neutral-tone carpeting of rental properties. But as each new item from the truck took up space in the house, it gained a bit more character. Aunt Jean stocked the new fridge, Jake and Tobias moved boxes to the living room, and Jordan and I lugged trash bags full of clothes. Dad and Uncle Steve tackled the larger furniture. We set up a stack of Zoe's plastic bins and Tom and Ronnie's trash bags. Sarah's job was to move each bin or bag of clothes to the appropriate bedroom.

I ended up in the kitchen with Aunt Jean again. One of the graduates had picked up a nice set of china from Goodwill and a pack of flatware from some bargain store. I thought of all the little stupid things you needed in a new place. Pots and pans, cooking utensils, dish soap, sponges, vacuum cleaners… Just buying the essentials was a pain in the ass.

I realized quickly that this house was not some passing fancy. Tom and his friends hadn't decided to just move into a house before graduation. This was the end result of what had to be months of planning, and probably a year of minimum wage savings. Zoe worked as a waitress, Tom worked at Best Buy, and Ronnie - who was the only one of them with a car - delivered pizza for Papa Johns. I didn't know how the three of them would maintain enough paid hours while all going to school full time and Tom keeping up his basketball schedule.

The adult world is such a racket. Maybe I'm just cynical, but the whole system seems to set you up for failure. You graduate high school and you need first and last month's rent plus deposit right out of the gate. And if you haven't been working since you were sixteen - and saving every penny the whole time - then somehow the world would see you as lazy and entitled, mooching off your parents.

I didn't know any other kids from my school that were getting their own places. And if Tom didn't have Zoe and Ronnie, I couldn't imagine it was even possible to pull off.

It was after six when the last item was pulled off the truck. Jake drove the SUV behind the U-Haul truck as Uncle Steve drove it back to the rental location. But even though the truck was done, the house wasn't. And Dad was ordering Chinese for everyone, knowing we were all tired and hungry. Ordering takeout for a dozen people was not cheap. In the meantime, Tobias was helping Ronnie reassemble the bed Jake had taken apart. Zoe was moving her clothes to the closet while Tom went to work assembling their new bed. Sara dutifully folded Tom's t-shirts and jeans as she processed the bags of clothes. She refused to touch her cousin's shorts, something that made Zoe and Tom laugh. As soon as Dad was off the phone, he was helping mom arrange the furniture in the living room and the study. It was supposed to be a dining room, but three college students needed room for desks and none of them had a problem eating at the coffee table. Aunt Jeanette had stocked the kitchen and was busy setting up the microwave. She had already turned on the coffee maker and the smell made me realize how badly I needed a caffeine fix. The only cups in the new place were reusable travel mugs from Wal-Mart.

I was going through boxes, taking stuff from room to room. I moved a bunch of stuff to Zoe and Tom's room, stuff to Ronnie's room, and finally I turned my attention to the pile of electronics. Two desktop computers needed to be set up, but I wasn't about to deal with that. Dad helped me move the TV that used to live in Tom's bedroom to the living room. Apparently they weren't going to have internet till Wednesday, and I didn't know if they were going to be able to afford cable or not. But I hooked up Tom's PlayStation and we threw in the DVD of Moana. I'd intended to put it on just to keep my younger siblings occupied, but before I knew it, all of us were gathered around the coffee table watching a kids' movie I'd seen too many times.

The doorbell rang, and at first I thought it was Jake and Uncle Steve, but instead, there was my friend Ellie, standing there with our delivery order. "Hey, Rachel," she said casually. "This isn't your place is it?"

I laughed. "No, you know damn well where I live." Ellie was half Taiwanese, and her uncle was the owner and head chef at the Yan Fú Wok. We only had a few classes together, and we weren't the closest of friends, but my parents ordered from the Wok pretty often, so I saw her every now and again. "My cousin just moved into his new place. Is this it or do you have another bag?"

"Oh, there's definitely another bag. Feeding the whole lacrosse team tonight?"

I handed the first bag to Aunt Jeanette while Ellie went back to her neon yellow motor scooter to get the second bag out of the carrier basket.

Jake and Uncle Steve got back a little later.

It was a good meal, and we all took a break to watch the movie. By eight thirty, we were all starting to wind down. There were mostly just odds and ends that were left. A few boxes of personal items, the computers, lamps, pictures. All the detail stuff was still boxed up, but they had a living room, they had beds, and all the necessities of a working kitchen. It would probably take them another day or two to get completely unpacked, but they knew they were on their own from here on out. Tomorrow would be Monday, the week would reset for all the working adults, and they would be all on their own.

There were hugs, there were tears, handshakes, and eventually, I ended up back in the Mazda. Cassie and Melissa had both come up empty on the sleepover front anyway. Any lingering thoughts I had about trying to spend the night at Jake's were quashed by my own fatigue and seeing Aunt Jeanette tearing up again, I just couldn't ask to impose. I didn't have the strength or energy left to be mad at my dad, anyway. I just wanted to get home, take a shower, and turn in for the night.

Sara was gone before we got back to the house. Dad carried her to her room, tucking her into her bunk bed. Jordan and I went to brush teeth. She went straight to bed, but I hit the shower. I needed it. I needed to feel clean, I needed the relief of hot water, I needed to not hear my own thoughts. I went back downstairs to grab my phone and both of my parents had fallen asleep on the couch while watching John Oliver.

I shook my head, grabbed a blanket from the closet, and draped it over them. I left the TV on. No real reason, maybe just for white noise. Maybe it made the house feel less empty.

I didn't want to wait till eleven. I didn't want to be in the house. I changed into my yoga pants again and left the night shirt on the bed. The change to owl felt disjointed and sluggish. I had trouble keeping the mental focus necessary. But I was finally free. No sisters, no lying father, no oblivious mother.

I flew around aimlessly again. I hesitated for a bit, but I figured I was unlikely to stumble upon any more secrets. I let the wind carry me, the world below glowing neon in the moonlight. But as beautiful as Santa Cruz was through an owl's eyes, the owl just wanted to get away from the lights. Within a few minutes of circling the town, I couldn't take it any longer.

I knew Tobias would be there before I got there. I knew he had probably morphed the second he had opportunity. But I got there before he'd gotten the fire started.

‹Incoming,› I said.

He nodded in the dark. But he sat still upon the log in the dark as I demorphed. Before the last of my night vision faded, I realized that he was crying. I grabbed one of my hoodies and a blanket from the tent. I sat next to him in the dark. I didn't bother with the fire. He didn't want me to watch him cry, and I didn't want to take away the dark. Instead, I put the blanket around the both of us and pulled him close. He didn't really move, didn't really acknowledge that I was there. But when I touched his hand, I felt his grip on the log tighten.

Tobias had been with us nearly all day. And I felt so stupid dragging the only orphan I knew to a family function. For just one night, he was part of our family. He had brothers and sister, if only for a night. He had aunt and uncles that didn't treat him as an inconvenience.

But the night was over, and he was alone again.

I didn't really know him like Jake and Marco did. I knew the same rumors that all the kids at our school knew. It was nearly impossible not to. He would forever be the kid whose mom disappeared. Looking him up online still brought up articles of the Santa Cruz Sentinel . And while his mother's disappearance wasn't the kind of personal tragedy that got randomly elevated to a national headline and adapted into a made-for-TV movie, there were any number of opinions on the internet. And Ockham's razor was that his mother either abandoned him or tragically fell victim to foul play. Neither was a comforting thought to a kid.

"We got here early," I said finally.

He nodded again, still not trusting himself to speak.

"If Jake's parents fell asleep as quickly as mine did, he might be here soon."

He sighed, and I saw him nod in the moonlight.

I helped him start the fire. He kept a good stash of firewood by the tent and some newspapers in an old popcorn tin. Add in a good long-barrel lighter, the kind they male for barbeque grills, and it was easy to start the fire pit. The gold flames rose quickly into the nest of paper under the wood before burning down to orange, then to a bright scarlet. It took a few minutes for the flame to eat into the wood, but when it did, the bright yellow tongues of flame crackled and the smell of woodsmoke somehow made me feel better.

I didn't know what to say to him. The only thing I could think to say was to bring up our last conversation. "So, still on that Robin Hood thing?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I can't think of an easier way to get cash. Not unless you wanna start selling tickets to ride the elephant." From crying a few minutes ago to the same normal Tobias that I didn't really know. It was impossible not to wonder how much of that so-called normal was a lie. I wasn't the only one walking around wearing a mask and it made me feel less alone.

I couldn't help but laugh. "How much are we charging to ride the elephant?"

"I don't know, think ten bucks a pop?"

"Ugh, we'd have to sell so many tickets."

"Fuck it," I said. "Let's just rob some goddamn car thieves."

He stopped dead. "You serious?"

"Yeah. Let's do it."


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

* * *

I realized very quickly that his reasons for doing this went beyond us needing wetsuits.

I didn't know much about Tobias's history of abuse before I saw him shirtless after morphing. It was impossible not to see the scars on his arms, his back. I just never picked up the red flags that his uncle was physically abusive. It seemed to be one of those things that once I started thinking about it, the less I could understand how I missed it. He used to wear long sleeves regardless of the weather. He would wander the town after school. He haunted places like a ghost, and I realized after the fact that he just was doing everything in his power to avoid going home. Anytime anything came up regarding his guardianship or his living situation, Tobias got quiet and avoided eye contact and Jake and Marco suddenly became very guarded. The signs were there, and I hadn't seen them.

Countless morphs to hawk, raven, squirrel, and owl, and Tobias still had scars.

He didn't talk about his aunt much, and I didn't ask. He did talk about his uncle a little bit, though. Mostly, he was trying to explain how he knew the things he knew, and who he was planning on robbing. But underneath all of it, there was something of a passive vengeance tone. He had been pushed around for half his life, and this was something he could do to get a little even. He wasn't afraid of his uncle. Listening to him talk, it was clear he had a deep disdain for him. Contempt. But not fear.

The goal was to get five hundred to a thousand dollars.

By the way, if it sounds like I'm overselling the value of a few wetsuits, trust me, I'm not. It was hard to forget that we were going to be working on an open ocean mission. And our part of the Pacific Ocean is cold. I remembered reading something in school, a current events thing we did for social studies, that while ocean temperatures were rising due to climate change, the average temperature of the Monterey Bay is generally in the mid-fifties to low sixties. That doesn't sound that cold if you think about air temperature, but with water, that's dangerously cold. Heat dissipates in water more than twenty-five times faster than in air. We learned that in chemistry class when we learned about specific heat and heat capacity. I may not be as smart as Marco, but I did make the honor roll.

And admittedly, I knew I had probably enough cash saved in my drawer that I could get five wetsuits without having to steal them, but frankly I didn't care. As far as I knew, once we got Aximili on terra firma, our role in the Andalite-Yeerk war was just going to be housing a stranded soldier. It would be a long time before Andalites got to us, but we had already done everything we could. I had killed people for Elfangor. Mauled aliens. I knew what the flesh of a Hork-Bajir tasted like. Those had only been the host bodies, helpless slaves to the slugs in their brains. I hadn't cared in the moment. I didn't have the luxury to feel bad about it while I was getting shot guilt came later. And when it did, it established residency. It had taken a solid week to get over the nightmares of the Yeerk pool, and I didn't care what the others said, I wasn't spending half a grand on Aximili.

I wasn't going to have nightmares and be broke. It had taken me a long time to save that wad of cash, and I wasn't Jake. I didn't mind getting my hands dirty.

The heists would be easy. It was immediately apparent that if you knew the people, knew where they'd be and when they'd be there - and could morph into a bird, of course - then robbing them was simply a matter of following them home and seeing where they put the money. I guess technically we were planning a series of burglaries more than a robberies. Whatever.

Of course, though, once Tobias and I started getting into it, that's when company showed up. Not sure why, but Tobias and I separated a little. Just felt too close as soon as someone else was there. I'd thought Jake might have been the next to arrive, but it was Cassie that swooped through the trees, announcing herself in thought-speech. When she was demorphed and dressed, she seemed surprised to see me there already.

"It's been a long day," I said, seeing the unspoken question on her face. "If I stayed home, I'd be asleep by now."

"Missed you guys today," she said. "Tom moved in okay?"

I nodded. "Renting a house. Apparently that Sharing group Tom volunteers for buys up and renovates old houses as part of some kind of low-income housing program. Some of them are earmarked for college students."

"I just thought he got a full-ride basketball scholarship," Tobias said.

Cassie shook her head. "No, UCSC is a Division Three program. They don't do athletic scholarships."

"Yeah, I think that's why Tom got into The Sharing," I said. "I heard they do a lot as far as helping kids get into college."

"You thinking of volunteering?" Cassie asked.

"No, not really. I might volunteer, but far as I know, they only have any real clout in the Greater Bay Area. And I don't know, I always thought maybe I'd go away to college."

Cassie frowned at that. "I'm probably going to UCSC," she said. "Not sure I want to, but since my dad works there, I'd get some discounts." I saw the expression on her face, the uncertainty.

Cassie and I have some things in common. Both of us kinda got stapled with certain responsibilities from a youngish age. She'd been working at the WRC since she was like seven or something. Little things at first. Injured rabbits, deer, squirrels. Then later, when she got older, she got to foxes, raptors, raccoons. She was excited when her dad let her handle her first wolf and bobcat. But her love of animals was a little tempered by her lack of choices.

I wanted more autonomy from my sisters. I didn't want to be a nanny or a de facto parent. But my parents had never pushed me towards any particular career. My mom liked being a lawyer, but she made no secret to us how much work it took to get there. It wasn't something just anyone could do, and you can't push people to law school unless they want to go. If you don't love the work, the work will eat you alive. She saw a lot of colleagues burn out, friends in college scrub out and change majors. Dad said he fell into advertising because he hated business school. Marketing was more fun than the corporate grind he'd started on. He went to business school simply because he wanted a job that paid well, and he was lucky enough to find something that worked for him. There was an attitude that I'd figure shit out when I got there. Find my own path. It was totally incompatible with the lack of freedom they gave me, but they didn't try to fit me into a box or an archetype.

Cassie was born and raised to be a vet, and nothing else. Cassie never went out for extracurriculars. No swim team, no debate team, nothing. She was really good at soccer. Being almost a farm girl, she had strong legs and a lot of stamina. But she didn't have the free time to try out of the soccer team, to go to practices or games. Her whole life was the barn behind her house.

"Even if you have to go to UCSC," I said. "You know you don't have to go for the veterinary program."

She nodded, almost meekly. "I'm not going to," she said. "I just haven't figured out what I am going to do. Or how I'd tell my parents."

"Welcome to talk to Mom about becoming a lawyer," I said. "I can see you becoming some kind of kickass environmentalist attorney."

She laughed. "Yeah, I think if I phrase anything as being for the animals, my parents will go for it. 'Mom, Dad, I'm going to become an aerospace engineer...for the animals.'"

Then I realized that Tobias had become very quiet. I winced, thinking we'd hit a nerve. "What about you? Any plans for after high school?"

He shrugged, shook his head. "No money for college," he said. "Art school would be cool, though."

"You can get student loans," I said.

He shook his head again. "No one would cosign for that." He chuckled suddenly, not a happy chuckle either. A sarcastic, cynical kind of laugh. "Then again, it's not like I couldn't get Marco to morph my uncle and sign the paperwork anyway."

Cassie frowned. "I don't think Elfangor would appreciate us using the morphing technology to commit fraud."

Tobias looked at her. "Elfangor was pragmatic. He solved problems. And trust me, my uncle owes me and then some." It wasn't like Tobias to be emphatic or firm. He hadn't been loud or anything, and really he wasn't rude about it, but it stunned both of us. Cassie looked hurt or embarrassed. Tobias softened immediately. "It's not something I would want to do, Cass. But honestly, I don't see myself getting into college."

For some reason, that made me mad. "Oh, you're going to college, T. We'll figure it out."

That got me a pair of looks, and I think I turned magenta for a minute. I didn't want to have to explain why I was so adamant, or why I was so invested in Tobias. I'm not sure I could even explain it to myself. Maybe it was seeing Tom and his housemates. It takes a village, that kind of thing. Maybe adulthood is supposed to be about independence, but that's stupid. Life is a team sport. That's what my lacrosse coach said. And the five of us tackled alien invaders for fuck's sake. All for one, as it were. We could handle getting Tobias into college.

But I couldn't take them looking at me, so I changed the subject. "Should we check the comm array?"

Tobias shrugged. "I guess we could, but honestly, I'd rather wait for the others. If I get it working, we're going to have Aximili on the line right away. Not sure if we have any new business to discuss. You, me, and Jake have all been busy, Marco had work. Cassie, anything new?"

She smiled. "Oh, yeah, I got something. It's part of why I'm early. Is it still here?"

Tobias nodded. "It's in the tent."

Cassie sat back down a few minutes later with her laptop. Oh, great, more stuff added to Tobias's nest. Cassie looked at Tobias suspiciously. "You didn't use this for porn, did you?"

Tobias laughed. "No, I haven't touched it. It was right where you left it, wasn't it?" he asked, holding his hands out to plead his innocence.

"Okay, then." A few keystrokes later, she called us over. "Alright, check this out."

"Okay," Tobias said, "so what is this?"

"Well, I went on Google maps to try to come up with a possible solution to the distance part of our plan."

"Oh, cool. Any luck with that?" he asked.

"Well my first idea was to see if it was any less distance if we flew from another part of the coast."

"Makes sense," I said. "Is it?"

"No, if you look at it, the California coastline from Monterey to Santa Barbara slopes southeast just enough that there's not one spot where it's really any closer to the seamount. If we left from Monterey, we'd only save like thirty miles. That's something, but not a lot."

"So what was your next thought?" Tobias asked.

"Well, I actually started looking at cruise ships. There's a cruise line that does a round-trip circuit from LA to Honolulu. I'm sure the actual path of the ship is less of a straight line, but look at this."

Cassie showed us a screenshot of the Google Maps satellite view. She knew the laptop would be out of wifi range when she showed us. The path from Los Angeles to Hawaii went right past the seamount. When she brought up that picture, it became very clear that this was the way to Aximili.

"How close is that?" I asked.

"Well, like I said, the ship isn't likely to take such a linear path, but I checked with the measure tool. It's only twelve miles south of the seamount."

"So I guess we're going to stow away on a cruise ship?" Tobias asked.

"Um, no," she said. "That's where the cruise ship idea falls apart. I went through a bunch of websites, and I couldn't find a cruise line that sails in June. So that's out."

"Then why are you showing this to us?" I asked.

"Because cruise ships aren't the only boats that sail from LA to Hawaii," she said patiently. "I have no idea how to figure out itineraries for cargo ships, but, I figured things do have to get shipped to Hawaii a lot. And I found this." She showed us a website that specialized in moving cars between Hawaii and California. "They have an LA branch, and if I'm reading this right, they send out shipments on a fairly regular basis."

Tobias and I looked at Cassie, then at each other. Even accepting that this was probably our best bet, the logistics involved were going to be challenging. Nothing says fun times like figuring out how to stow away on a cargo ship.

* * *

"Um, if I may be so bold," Marco said. "I think you mean to say that we are going to have to stow away on a cargo ship."

It had been a bit of a wait. Jake and Marco were the last to show up. Jake, I could understand. But Marco had been off work for awhile, so I was surprised he was so late getting there. Then again, Jake had said eleven, so it's not like he was late. In any case, the three of us that got there early had already gone through a few of the weak points in the plan.

We had done some crazy shit for Elfangor. While I had been meticulously keeping track of our high school principal in case he ran to the Yeerk pool, the others had morphed raccoons and smuggled a nanny cam into a vent in his office. We had snuck into the zoo after hours to acquire some dangerous animals. And, of course, we had gone to the San Jose airport and set off explosives in the alien tank room.

That last one had been done with Elfangor. What Cassie proposed wasn't as bad as the Yeerk pool, not even close. So on one hand, we had done worse. But considering the only real solo missions we'd done, this was a step up from a sleepover with Melissa or scurrying through a vent. It was bigger in scope than flying up to the zoo. Even petting the grizzly bear had been relatively straightforward.

"Are we just going to morph squirrels and hide in the trunk of someone's car?" Marco asked.

Cassie looked kinda sheepish, but I just rolled my eyes. "No, Marco, give us some credit. We don't need to be on the ship till it's leaving port."

Marco raised an eyebrow. "And how are we going to know when it leaves port?"

I shrugged. "Look, we've had this plan for less than an hour. We're still hammering it out. But, that said, I think all we need to do is get in their LA branch office after hours. Or, I don't know, pretend we have a car to move and just call them?"

I do sometimes love teasing Marco. He looked like he wanted to scream. He didn't though. He just sighed in exasperation. "If calling them is an option, why is breaking into the office your first choice?

"Well, see, that brings us to Part B," Tobias said.

"Had a plan for an hour and there's a Part B…" Marco grumbled.

This whole time, Jake had nothing more than a thoughtful look. Aximili had asked us who our leader was, and all of us looked to Jake. Till that point, I don't think any one of us was really "in charge" or anything. I mean, this was a rescue mission, and the idea that we'd need a leader after Elfangor just never really occurred to me in the last week. But I think we all picked Jake because of two very specific character traits on his part.

First, Jake never shied away from hard work. He could have bailed on the Yeerk pool that first time. We hadn't planned well enough for it. And at that point, we knew Chapman's schedule. We could have waited three days and come back later. But Jake had a lizard morph and he played an audible. He had gone in solo. There was nothing Jake could tell any of us to do that he wouldn't do himself.

And the second thing was that Jake wasn't much of an ego. He knew Marco was smarter than he was, he knew Cassie understood people better than he ever would, and he knew Tobias was more creative. And he knew what I'd pick given the choice between sitting on the bench or playing through a broken toe. He knew what all of our strengths were. And he was the rare type that could have the authority to say we're doing something while simultaneously being humble enough to know when he wasn't the best voice in the room.

So when he smiled and laughed, we noticed. "Marco, if you're this amped up for Part B, what are you going to do if there's a Part F? I mean, damn, you're going to be dead on the ground by the time they get to Q, aren't you?"

Marco gave a sour smile. "Oh, I need so much medication to deal with you people."

"Hey, if you're not sharing the Xanax, I don't want to hear about it," I said. "We're all stressed, and the quicker we get that frickin' furry smurf out of the ocean, the quicker we're done with this. Tobias, tell them your idea."

"Uh… yeah. Okay, so getting on the ship is only part of it. The other part is that once we're on the ship, we need to know where we are. So we're going to have to leave some kind of GPS tracker in one of the cars. Then when we get on the boat, probably in bird morph, we'll need to find that car."

Marco made a face. Jake seemed to be taking an almost sadistic pleasure in his best friend's state of distress. "Marco, I know you don't like the idea. I don't think we're going to find an idea that you will like. The question is if you can give us a better alternative."

"Oh, I can shoot holes in this for awhile. That seems to be my contribution to the group, doesn't it? But, no, for the amount of distance we have to cross… Fuck it. Cassie, good job. We're going to have to start thinking up an alibi, though."

Alibi? Cassie and Tobias had similar expressions of confusion. Jake's bemused smile slowly vanished. "There's that camping trip we talked about."

"Wait, why do we need an alibi?" Cassie asked.

Marco shook his head. "Tobias, you're the only one with a phone. Can you find one of those straight-line calculators? How far is it to LA?"

"Uh, sure." A minute of dithering later. "Okay, two hundred ninety-four miles."

"Yeah, that's a six-hour flight as the crow flies."

"Raven," Cassie said.

"Oh, bite me. Look, it'd take us all night to fly down there, and how far did you say the seamount was from LA?"

Cassie's face fell. "More than five hundred miles."

Marco shook his head. "I have to figure it's going to take us a solid day for the boat to get there. Twenty-four hours on a cargo ship… This is not going to be easy. And it's going to be more than four hundred miles back to shore, no boat, with an alien in tow. The way back is going to suck so bad. We're going to need probably at least three days to pull this off, should probably budget for longer."

I sighed. "If I'm going to be out for a few days, I'm going to need to pay Melissa to babysit. And Cassie, do you have anyone that can fill in for you at the WRC?"

She shook her head. "I have no idea. I'll talk to my mom tomorrow. We're telling our parents that we're going camping, then?"

Jake nodded. "Yeah, camping trip is the easiest thing I can think of. Your dad already knows Marco and I were thinking of doing it. If we can rearrange our work schedule, I think we can pull off a four-day window. So this is coming together. We have some time to figure out the boat. First, though, we need to acquire our whale morph. Where do we stand on that?"

"That part of it should hopefully be a little easier," Cassie said. "We're going to need some ocean morphs, though."

"Well," Marco said, "If we need to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, we need to go."

I thought about that. "When's the next day the both of you are off together?"

"Neither of us work tomorrow," Jake said.

"Well, the Aquarium is something we can do with my sisters. The only problem, though, is unlike the zoo, we're not going to be able to sneak in after closing… are we?"

Everyone looked at each other.

Me and my big mouth.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

* * *

"Should we try to go tonight?" Tobias asked.

I shook my head. "Hell no. I'm too tired and I'm sure Jake is too. Besides, we should probably try to get a look at the place first."

"How much are tickets?" Tobias asked.

"Well I have a membership," I said. "Pretty sure Jake and Cassie do, too." Both of them nodded. "We should be able to get you and Marco in for free on the guest passes, but I think student tickets are like forty bucks."

"I'll be done with my morning rounds about ten," Cassie said. "Need to be back here by six."

"That won't be a problem," Jake said. "So aquarium tomorrow. Do we have any real idea what kind of animals we need to be looking at?" He looked at Cassie when he asked that.

She nodded. "Well, obviously, we need a decent seabird morph. I mean, if it comes to it, we could probably pick up a seagull morph, but the aquarium has a Laysan albatross. For over-water flying, that's as good as we're going to find. Plus, the aquarium has sea lions and dolphins."

"Okay, so aquarium tomorrow," Jake said. "What are their hours?"

Tobias brought up the website on his phone. "Okay, they're open till six in the summer, and, oh…"

Nothing good ever starts like that. I mean that's the sound someone makes when they walk into your apartment and sees all the blood on the floor before slowly backing out of the room. "What's the problem?"

"Well, the first thing you see when you go to their site, there are a lot of cameras in these exhibits, and apparently they have live feeds running constantly."

I looked at Marco. I expected him to tell us we were screwed, but Marco does have one really cool personality trait. Yes, Marco's smart, he thinks he's funny - and he can be - but those aren't his best traits. By far, what I like best about Marco is that even when he audibly complains about how much he doesn't want to do something, once he decides to be a part of it, he doesn't back out of it. He didn't take this piece of information as a dealbreaker. Sitting there, staring into the fire with his fingers steepled along his nose, he apparently went a very different way with it. "Do you remember the original camera plan?" he said softly.

Jake looked at him. The moment stretched uncomfortably before he simply said one word. "No."

The problem though, is that all of us knew him well enough that he didn't mean it. You know how you might say no when your best friend asks if you think that boy is cute? And by the tone of your voice, your friend can tell if you're serious? This was not an adamant no. This was a "you've got to be kidding me" kind of no.

I just didn't understand why. And I asked as much. "What's the part I'm missing? Jake just bought the camera."

"Yeah," Marco said. "He found one in his price range. But the original plan was that some thievery might be involved."

"Yeah, okay. What part of that comes into play here?" I asked.

"We were going to blow a transformer outside the Best Buy," Tobias said. "Take out power to the whole building."

I looked at all of them. "You guys were going to take a major electronics retailer off the grid? Over a camera that cost what, less than two hundred?"

"If it came to that," Cassie said, quite sheepishly.

"And it didn't," Jake said firmly. "We did that without breaking any more rules than we had to."

I was too tired for that line of reasoning. "Jake, I appreciate the concern for the moral center. But we're not the fucking cub scouts. I killed people getting out of the Yeerk pool. If I had to hijack a some rich guy's yacht at knifepoint to get Elfangor's brother, I wouldn't bat an eye. The only thing that kept me from bringing up that idea is that I know jack shit about boats. I don't care if we have to free Willy or find Dory while we're there, but we're going, and none of us is going to be on fucking camera. Is that clear?"

They all stared at me in stunned silence. There was a part of me that wanted to be embarrassed. Or maybe apologize, maybe backtrack the knifepoint comment. But a larger part of me just didn't care. It was the first time I - any of us - had brought up our body count. There was this cloud of… denial? It became this thing we just didn't talk about. We swept it away like it never happened. To be fair, Elfangor had just died. If you've never heard your friend dying in agony, screaming his last in telepathy, then don't even fucking talk to me. There was a lot about that night I didn't want to remember. But there were few moments that I'd ever forget.

And for a week, we all just went forward. Headlights. That's what it was. I remember reading something, some story or maybe a how-to guide to something. I don't even remember the point, but I remember the metaphor. You can drive more than a hundred miles in the dark with no more than a hundred yards of visibility if you have the headlights on. You don't have to see the whole journey, you just have to not hit anything. What was this, like nine days, all of us had driven with the headlights on. Autopilot. I remember Marco wanting out the first time we were together after it happened. The first time we ever talked to Aximili. And I remember how grateful I was that I didn't have to see any of them for days after that.

But by the third day, I was crying in my bed at night. It was over nothing really. I had taken my sisters to the playground. I hadn't wanted to sit inside and watch them. I just didn't have it in me that day. School was coming to a close, I hadn't talked to Cassie in too long, I had some rather interesting conversations with Melissa, and I just needed to be out of the house and not think. And while we were out at the park, I saw some random stranger, a woman out with her kids. No one I recognized, no one really important. The only reason she mattered to me at all was a passing resemblance of a woman in the pool. A woman I had swatted sideways into a wall. A woman, who either unconscious or already dead - and I would never know for sure - was then eaten by the grotesque centipede monstrosity that was a Taxxon.

I had gone home that afternoon barely talking to my sisters. And I cried silently in my bed that night, reliving a moment I should never have seen. The terrible part, the part that made me feel cold inside, that made me shiver on a June night under blankets, was how easy it was to throw that woman. How little she mattered when I swung my grizzly bear paw into her chest. In the moment, she was a threat. She was a Controller, and she had a weapon. There was nothing to it in the moment. It was her, or it was me, and it wasn't going to be me. But now I wasn't in danger, and she was still dead. Worse than dead. She was Taxxon shit now. And she wasn't even the enemy. She was just the host body of the Yeerk.

"Rachel?" I blinked at Cassie's voice. I was on a log by a fire, and they were all there looking at me. I was crying. Hot tears dripped down my cheeks. When had that started? I wiped my eyes and sniffled.

"I'm okay," I said.

"Like hell," Cassie said. She was wiping tears from her own eyes. Tobias held his face in his hands, not crying that I could tell, but rocking back and forth. Marco was crying. He was turned somewhat away from the fire, trying to get a handle on something he'd kept corked for too long. Jake had a faraway look. Tears stood still in his eyes, looking like gold sparks in the light of the fire.

"I still see her face," he said, finally.

"Who?" I asked.

He shook his head absently. "I, uh, I called her Snow White. Y'know, in my head," he said. "The black-haired girl in the control room. She reached for a Dracon beam… and Elfangor…" He let it hang there. I knew what happened. We all did. Elfangor had shot her right between the lungs with the Andalite version of the same weapon. "There was that moment where she realized she'd been shot… and she just… _fell_. And then… minutes later I was a tiger, and I didn't care who I killed, what I killed. I just knew that I didn't want to die. I didn't want to end up like Snow White."

Cassie held his hand. She didn't say anything. She wasn't trying to make us feel better. She wasn't the type to cheapen the moment like that. She knew nothing could make us feel better. What we felt now, we would probably always feel. In the future, maybe it wouldn't eat us alive like it did now, but she wanted us to feel comfortable sharing.

This had become that kind of meeting. Animorph Anonymous. Hello. My name is Rachel.

"When I woke up the next day," Marco said, "I couldn't stop squeezing my right hand. I clenched my fist till the tendons locked up and it hurt to open my hand."

Marco had chosen a gorilla. And because he had picked up a Yeerk Dracon beam and had the dexterity to use it, Jake had tasked him to stay in his battle morph rather than follow him, Cassie, or Tobias to squirrel morph. We knew we needed the cover fire. He knew we needed the cover fire. But some minutes later and there was a severed gorilla arm and a broken Dracon beam on the floor. I woke up dreaming about holes in my chest, and he woke up reminding himself that he still had that hand, that the Escafil technology let him regenerate the tissue…

"I had nightmares that I got shot," I said. I looked at Jake as I continued, "I remember you yelling my name, but I never told you how close I was to fading out. When the lights went out… with the bombs… you told me to remorph in the dark, remember?"

Jake nodded. "I remember," he said soberly.

"What I've never told you is that I was trying to demorph almost as soon as I hit the floor. I remember Tobias scooped me up, and hanging from that tusk, it was all I could do to stay conscious. It took me forever to maintain the clarity to actually change."

Cassie broke the awkward moment of silence that followed. "What was your dream?"

"Nightmare," I corrected, sighing. "The first night, it was like it was stuck on replay. Shot, down, Tobias would carry me and I'd remorph, turn the corner, boom shot again. Over and over. The third night, the third night you guys all ran out the other side of the pool. You thought I was dead… couldn't get to me. I heard Jake yell to Tobias. 'Leave her!' you said."

"I'd never leave you behind," Jake said emphatically.

I actually laughed in spite of the tightness in my throat and chest. "It's cute that you think that, cuz. Really, I mean, I appreciate it. But I was a seven-hundred-pound rag doll. Taxxons were there. If I didn't move, didn't answer… would you really risk your life - their lives - coming back for a dead bear?"

He sighed and broke eye contact. He knew he didn't know. There was no way any of us could answer that. Cassie looked at Tobias, I think wondering if he wanted to add anything. He looked at her and shook his head.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I'm sure I killed a few people. Elephants aren't subtle. But," he sighed. "I don't know, I guess I was just fine with it. Like when you see something on the news and you know people died, but you just don't care? I didn't connect to it. Maybe I'm just too broken, but I didn't come back and feel guilty. That wasn't what I cried about."

"What did you cry about?" Cassie asked.

He looked around us. "This," he said. "You guys all went home. Brothers, sisters, parents. You guys had people that would miss you in the morning if you never came home. My uncle hasn't seen me in more than a week, and it makes no difference to him. None. Well, not till the checks from the state stop, then he'll care. But this… I spent more time with him, with Elfangor, than you guys did. Or could. He told me stories about other planets. Asked odd questions about Earth. I guess he already knew a lot of it, but still. I remember crawling in the tent over there and falling asleep thinking the place still smelled like Andalite."

He was still next to me, and I grabbed him and held him. I felt the hot droplets sting on my neck and shoulder as he cried into me. I felt the texture of his hair under my fingertips as I stroked his head.

All thoughts of Aximili, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and shipping services to Hawaii evaporated. For a long time, we just watched the fire burn. It didn't take long for Tobias to stop crying, but I didn't let him go. He was warm, and he was real, and damn it, he needed some human affection. He needed to know there were people that would miss him if he… if he didn't come back. I would never know the depths of what he had endured, but I could hold him in the firelight. I could be there for him if he needed a shoulder. And the more he leaned on me, the more I found myself leaning on him.

Marco got up after a point, breaking the spell that held us in place. He added more wood to the fire, stoking the fire with a stick. "We don't, none of us, have any clue what we're doing," he said. "And there's no shame in that. This isn't something five teenagers can handle. And I would love nothing more right now than to go home and go to sleep. But we're here for a reason."

Jake nodded. Cassie was leaning against him, her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, I suppose. "Marco's right," she said. "We have to get back to this. But we let some of it out, we're talking about it. Probably going to have to do that every so often. I need you guys," she said, making a point to make eye contact with Tobias before she went on. "I need all of you. And if we keep this stuff in…" She didn't finish and she didn't need to. All of us knew what the last week felt like.

"So," Jake said, trying to loop back to the meeting. "I guess we're blacking out the Aquarium."

"Look," I said, "we'll worry about that afterwards. Everyone okay going to the aquarium tomorrow? Okay, good. Let's see if we can't get the comm array working."

Jake and Tobias spent the next few minutes putzing around with the device, trying to figure out where we had messed up. Tobias went through his checklist again, and then the moment of truth.

"Aximili?" Tobias asked. "Are you there?"

The psychic projection flickered before us for a few seconds, then failed. I can hear you but I cannot see you, he said.

"Yeah, that's what we have here," I said. "You said something about configure seven the other night. We didn't catch all of it."

The seventh port on the base of the communication array. Turn the dial.

Sometimes complex problems do have very simple solutions. The furry blue form of the Andalite showed up in crystal clarity, and if I didn't know he was a projection, I'd swear he was right there with us.

"Okay, that's much better," Marco said. "Now are the files transferring?"

The data link is secure, Aximili said. The transfer should not take long.

"Do you know what any of this stuff is?" Tobias asked. "I mean, you need to override the door locks, but do you have any idea what's actually in the files?"

Aximili seemed a bit deflated. No. Unfortunately, I won't even know what files I have until the transfer is complete.

"Hey, um, I hate to be the girl to ask this," I said, "but what are we going to do if this doesn't work?"

You mean if I cannot override the door locks even after the file transfer?

"Yeah, that's what I mean."

Aximili seemed to ponder that for a long moment. Truthfully, I do not know. The transfer is nearly complete. Give me some time to go through the data.

And just like that, the hologram or whatever you want to call it was gone.

"Anyone else thinking this is going to go badly?" Marco asked.

I rolled my eyes. "Just once, I wish you could be optimistic about things."

But then the minutes dragged on. No word from Aximili. We were all quiet. I was exhausted, I needed to sleep. The fire crackled in something almost like a freeform jazz rhythm, and I let myself drift for a bit. All in all, it had been a fun day. Within a few hours of moving my cousin to his new place, I now had plans to rip off car thieves, stow away on a cargo ship, and vandalize what was perhaps the premiere aquarium in the country.

"Jesus, did Elfangor just have terabytes of Andalite porn on that thing?" Marco asked.

"Boys," Cassie said. "It always comes back to porn, doesn't it?"

But just then, the hologram kicked back on. That took much longer than I anticipated, he said flatly.

"Did you get the doors open?" Jake asked.

I will soon. I am initiating the override protocols now, but the process is very time-consuming and work-intensive by myself. I should have more technical information for you tomorrow.

"We're not going to be here tomorrow," Tobias said. "We have some animals to acquire."

The whale? Aximili asked.

"Not yet," Cassie said. "We need a few morphs to help get to the whale." She went on to explain that whales tend to live some distance offshore and that our best chance of finding one involved a trip north - further away from his seamount. He listened, intently it seemed, as she tried to explain sea lions, dolphins, and sea gulls. I wondered what he thought of them. He was so alien to us, it was easy forget how alien we - and every living thing on this planet - was to him.

This is a strange world, Aximili said, finally.

Really, who could argue with that?


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

* * *

When I told my sisters we were going to Monterey for the day, their reaction was appropriate, as I think only dolphins could fully appreciate the noise Sara made. Jordan was a bit more contained, but it was obvious that both of them were ecstatic. We hadn't gone to the aquarium since spring break, and it took no effort on my part to get them ready. In no time at all, my sisters were dressed and they were fine with PopTarts for breakfast. I even got Jordan to feed the guinea pigs without any complaining.

My parents were already at work for the day, and while I had fallen into a comfortable denial as far as my dad was concerned, I was more than fine that I didn't have to deal with him that morning. I like sundresses and skirts a lot, but this was a day for pockets, and I had just the cutest white denim cutoffs. I made sure I had the membership cards and cash in my back pocket, then mentally griped that not one pair of shorts I owned had a pocket that would actually fit my cell phone. The reality of women's jeans is that they're designed to flatter more than they are to be functional. Who needs to fit a phone as long as your ass looks good, right? So stupid.

I grabbed my backpack, and made sure everyone had a change of clothes. There were a number of touch pools at the aquarium and a few places where we could conceivably get wet, and I was not going to sit in Jake's SUV for an hour in wet clothes.

I was already on my second coffee before Jake showed up. I was quickly becoming a caffeine lush. Coffee hadn't been my favorite, but running on as little sleep as I was getting - and not particularly restful sleep at that - I found that given enough French vanilla creamer, coffee really is the best.

Jake helped me shuffle my sisters into his SUV. Technically, it could seat seven, but that was assuming three children in the rear row. I'm tall for a girl, so it was a bit snug. If Sara had been much bigger, it would've been uncomfortable. As it was, with a sister on either side, I was in for a ride. It takes a little under an hour to drive to Monterey from Santa Cruz.

Thankfully, one of our little bedtime routines is to make sure tablets are put on their chargers. Usually for any given activity I pick for a day, one of my sisters will complain about it. Like Jordan at the library. Today, I wanted them to stay occupied in the car, and Kindles and headphones are great for car rides with kids.

It was about ten or so when we picked up Marco. He sat in the middle with Tobias. He had brought - and I wish I were kidding - the DVD box set of BBC's _Blue Planet_. It was an appropriate choice, I'll say that much. When we pulled up to Cassie's and Jake got out to go get her, Marco put in one of the discs. I'm not sure if he was trying to be helpful. I had forgotten Jake's SUV even had a DVD player, and it was great in terms of keeping my sisters busy. Or perhaps he intended for me and Tobias to gain some insight as far as what we were getting into so far as morphing our way down four hundred meters. But when he played the episode entitled simply _The Deep_ , I wondered if he was messing with us.

My sisters were fine with it, though, and we spent the next forty minutes listening to David Attenborough talk about submersibles, bioluminescence, and the sad reality of the male anglerfish.

When we got to Monterey, we didn't go straight to the aquarium. We parked at the Downtown East Garage like we always did. There's a trolley that comes by the garage every ten or fifteen minutes, and it would take us the rest of the way to the aquarium. But first, we had a stop to make.

We got out on Reeside Avenue at the Cannery Row Inn. My sisters immediately turned to me as we hopped off the trolley. "I thought we were going to the aquarium," Jordan said,

"Oh, we are," I said.

"Then what are we doing?" she asked.

"Come on, kid, you'll see."

We were only two blocks from the San Carlos Beach, but we weren't here for that either. It was a nice day, and the waters of the Monterey Bay shimmered beryl green in the shallow waters off the beach.

"Are we going swimming?" Sara asked.

"You don't have your swimsuit, Sara," Jordan pointed out.

"It's a surprise," Jake said. "Come on."

At the end of the beach is a marina parking lot, but if you keep on the pedestrian path, it becomes Coast Guard Pier. We passed a few people fishing, but the pier was pretty sparse. The last twenty or so feet of the path was blocked off by a rectangular chain link cage. The reason for the fence was very obvious. Jordan and Sara heard them before they saw them, and if you've never heard the guttural barking of a sea lion up close, it's a sound you don't miss. Beyond the fencing, the breakwater continued for at least another four hundred feet of bare rock. And this elongate finger of bare rock was the perfect place for sea lions to hang out.

My sisters thought this was the best thing ever.

"Omigod, omigod!" Sara squealed. "Look at them! Rachel! Look at them!"

"Whoa, did you see that one?!" Jordan burst.

One of the sea lions had just jumped out of the water and then rushed back under the waves. If you've never seen a sea lion in person before, one of the first things you notice is that they're considerably bigger than they look in nature documentaries. Case in point, one of the big males swam by, and we watched its silhouette glide effortlessly through the water. He had to be over seven feet long, and as he crawled out of the water, pulling his massive brown bulk up onto the rocks, he was probably at least as heavy as my grizzly bear. Actually, looking at it, sea bear might have been a better name for them. The big brute shook water from his fur like a dog, the layer of blubber rippling over the muscular frame. He bellowed loudly and chased off one of the other sea lions before lying down on the warm rock.

There were signs on the fence warning that it was illegal and dangerous to feed or bother the sea lions, as if it wasn't patently obvious that an animal the size of a sofa could hurt you. But the threat of a nasty bite or thousands of dollars in fines was apparently insufficient as a deterrent, hence the fencing. As far as Jordan and Sara knew, this was just a lovely little addition to the day plan at the aquarium. But this was a tactical location for us.

We all had our cell phones out, taking pictures. Nothing weird about a group of teens taking shots of wildlife. But we were also stealthily - we hoped - taking shots of the surrounding area. The breakwater was pretty isolated, but we wanted to be certain there were no cameras in the area, no vantage points where someone might see five teenagers trying to pet the sea lions.

It was going to be night when we came back here, and I was already concerned that the sea lions might sleep somewhere else. We'd have to hope that this was their overnight spot too. But watching the big guy bark, I could see his teeth. This was likely not going to be a fun experience for us. Jake had already been bitten by a tiger. And despite their playful disposition on the rocks and their proximity to humans on the breakwater, I knew they were wild animals. And they were predators. An animal doesn't get that big if it sucks at catching fish.

We were on the clock, though, so after about half an hour, we had to get Jordan and Sara to say goodbye to the sea lions and walk the half mile back to the same intersection to catch the trolley again.

If you've never been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I really recommend it. It can be a little pricey for tourists - four adult tickets cost as much as a one-year membership - but it's definitely worth it. There's a walking tour on Google Maps, but it doesn't do the live experience of being there any justice. For one thing, the Google tour was done while the aquarium was closed, and even on a Monday, the aquarium was bustling with people. Being summer vacation, a lot of the crowd was teenagers like us, but there are always crowds of grandparents, nannies, and stay-home parents pushing strollers.

Coming in the front entrance, you're immediately hit with the scale of the place. The high, trussed ceiling made me feel small everytime, and after we checked in at the membership counter, the first thing you see in the main hallway is the full-sized fiberglass orca hanging from the ceiling above the door to the gift shop. And when a killer whale looks small, you know you're in a large space.

The first thing we did was to go right back outside.

The northern corner of the aquarium sits out over part of the bay itself, and it's this deliberate incorporation of the native environment into the building's design that makes the Monterey Bay Aquarium the marvel that it is. You can see dolphins at the aquarium, but they're not captive animals. They just happen to live in the bay and occasionally pass by. On a trip with our parents, I think Sara was probably four or five, we once saw a humpback in the bay from the deck at the aquarium, so in a lot of ways, it's just a lottery chance of what you'll see any given trip.

Today, there was nothing but pelicans and cormorants out in the bay. There were probably other things out there we couldn't see, but my sisters wanted to see the otters, which meant we had to go back inside. There are two places to see the otters. There's the second floor viewing area if you like watching sea otters float on their backs. But just around the corner from the fiberglass orca - and under a second orca you can't see from the main entrance - there's the underwater viewing for the otters. That's where we all ended up.

The fluffy little sea weasels always seemed to me to look like a masterfully skilled toymaker made the best ever teddy bear without really knowing what a bear was supposed to look like. They are unimaginably fluffy. Unlike dolphins or sea lions that have a layer of blubber to insulate against the cold water, sea otters have only their thick coats. A sea otter has ten times as many hairs per square inch as the average person has on their entire scalp. This is why whenever they're not feeding or playing, they spend so much time grooming their fur. They actually blow into their fur to add insulating bubbles of trapped air. At least, that's what the plaque by the tank said.

But sea otters weren't on our morph menu.

Our next stop was to the bat ray touch pool. Jordan was way more into this idea than Sara was. My youngest sister was terrified of the large black rays swimming in the pools. It was actually Tobias that calmed her down. He picked up my sister and held her to his hip like she was a toddler and she watched as he dropped his left hand into the water as the stingray swam past.

When his fingers touched the ray, I knew he was acquiring it. The ray became torpid and slow the way animals always did when we acquired them. Sara reached down, hanging from his neck almost, and pet the fish before Tobias let it go.

I looked at Cassie, my eyes darting to Tobias. She had seen it too. She saw the question I couldn't ask, and all she did was nod. Then she tapped Jake on the shoulder and before I knew it, she was petting one of the rays herself. I was a little confused, I'll admit. Stingrays hadn't been on our morph list, but I went along with it. One by one, all of us acquired a bay ray. The texture of the fish's skin was like wet silk, and if anyone noticed the rays being a little sluggish after being pet by five teenagers, no one said or did anything. I was worried we were going to have aquarium staff running up to us to see what we'd done to the rays, but thankfully that didn't happen.

We did, however, leave the touch pool very soon after we were done.

We spent the rest of our time at the aquarium in more of a freeform fashion. We wondered around the kelp forest exhibit, and we caught a keeper chat regarding the aquarium's resident Laysan albatross, Makana. The aquarium had an ongoing commitment for raising awareness to the extent of the damage plastic wreaks on the ocean ecosystem, and albatrosses are particularly susceptible to eating plastic trash that floats. But of all the animals on our morph list, the albatross was up there. And while the bird had long-since been acclimatized to people and crowds, the keeper made it very clear to Sara that Makana wouldn't like being pet.

At the end of the keeper chat and a brief question and answer session, most of the crowd started to move on to other exhibits. But Cassie went up and thanked her for her time. I saw the saw the faraway look in her face before her eyes fluttered. I knew Cassie had just acquired the albatross handler.

The only one of us that had ever morphed another human was Jake when he'd morphed Chapman. I had acquired Mrs. Chapman. Jake had asked me to, I think just in case, but I'd never morphed her. Honestly, before that moment, I had forgotten all about it. There were any number of things I might be able to get away with as an adult. Well, maybe not as Kimberly Chapman, but being someone else for a while had some appeal. Probably a terrible idea, but still appealing.

We hit the _Tentacles_ exhibit for awhile. The aquarium had a whole section just for its cephalopods, which is cool. We saw the pyjama squid, flamboyant cuttlefish, and the giant Pacific octopus. I wondered if any of them should be on our morph list. The giant octopus is one of my favorites. I was thinking of maybe getting an octopus tentacle as a tattoo on my calf for awhile. Being an octopus, that would be fun.

We stopped at the auditorium to watch the short film about the aquarium's ongoing Project White Shark. From there, we went up to the second floor and actually ran out a decent chunk of the rest of our time at the aquarium in the kid-friendly Splash Zone exhibit. My sisters loved the penguins and the other touch pools, and time passed quickly.

We caught the afternoon feeding for the sea otters, which meant it was already three thirty. We decided to call it a day, and Jake promised Jordan and Sara that we'd come back a few times over the summer. And he suggested McDonald's since it had been more than five hours since any of us had eaten. The trolley ride back to the garage was spent talking and all of us had our own highlights for the trip. I noted that Jake had developed something of what could be taken as an unhealthy predisposition for fast food since we'd met Elfangor. But I was hungry too, and I didn't have a problem with it, just something I noticed.

I spent a decent amount of time on the way home texting Melissa. She liked the idea of the camping trip a lot, and she was surprisingly supportive of me ditching my sisters for a few days. I smiled when she texted that she hadn't succeeded in her quest for a summer job yet, so taking a bite out of my big sister stipend was admittedly better than no pay at all. Plus, her dad seemed preoccupied with some kind of summer thing now that school was out.

I took that with a frown. We knew exactly two Controllers and I was still weirded out that her basement was now firmly off-limits. I've known Chapman as my friend's dad long before Melissa and I ever made it to high school, though admittedly he was a history teacher when I met him. But he usually spent his summers working the adult-education circuits and doing volunteer work. Habitat for Humanity and stuff like that. I wondered what he might be doing that seemed out of the ordinary when it clicked to me that I had no reliable reference for how long Chapman had been a Controller. I guess I just assumed it was a relatively recent development. No real reason for that, though. I suppose since the Yeerk invasion was new to me, I just projected that it was new for Chapman. But there was no way to tell really. Elfangor had told us the Yeerks had been on Earth for a long time. More than a decade. It was hard now not to wonder if his promotion to principal wasn't some element in a Yeerk plot. Or maybe becoming principal is what put a target on him in the first place. Hell, for all I knew, Chapman had been a Controller since I've known him. That thought turned my stomach.

Then I kept going with it. Could he have been a Controller even before Melissa was born? Could she have been nothing more than a prop piece in the alien invasion? Two Controllers having a kid just to assuage suspicion?

I shook the idea from my head. Yes, partly just because I didn't want that to be true, but also because I remembered that Melissa had mentioned she noticed the changes in her parents' behaviors. It was something that had a concrete beginning. I wondered how to ask her for details. She'd chalked it up to midlife crises or even just thought maybe she was exaggerating the change out of teen angst or something. It should be noted that Melissa Chapman is probably the least angstish teen anyone has ever met. She could sell pep to the cheer squad.

I went back to my fries, absently listening to Jake and Cassie talking in the front. I noticed Marco had put on another episode of Blue Planet and it was not only keeping his own attention, but also Tobias and Sara were watching it. Jordan had decided to read a book on her Kindle. She liked to listen to music when she was reading; I saw her lightly tapping her finger against the edge of her Kindle case.

We had another half an hour before we got home, and Melissa could be somewhat mercurial when it came to texting. So I decided to look up bat rays on my phone. Ironically, or I suppose obviously, I ended up on the aquarium website. I found that they are actually a type of eagle ray, though that fact was completely meaningless to me. They're common in kelp forests so they're common in the Monterey Bay. I also found that they can get to be six feet across, though the ones we had acquired had only been maybe two feet wide. Their teeth are fused into plates because their prefered prey are clams and crabs and the plates are designed to crush shells.

But it was the last fact that made me both understand why we had acquired them and get silently pissed at Tobias. See, it turns out that bat rays are a prey species for California sea lions.

We were going to morph into bait.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

* * *

Our dad was home when Jake dropped us off, and suddenly I felt my stomach drop. I don't know why I was surprised really. Maybe I just got used to him being gone as often as home that I somehow forgot he was back from his trip already. Or maybe I just really wished he wasn't home. I don't know. My thoughts concerning my father were obviously complicated. I was mad, I was hurt, and the really fucked up thing is that he had put me in a position of having to keep a secret from my mom and he didn't even know it. I didn't want him to leave… but I didn't want to have to see him either.

As much as I would have loved to have dropped off my sisters and run full tilt to Melissa's for the night, I knew I couldn't. No, I had to fly down the coast tonight and turn into sea lion bait. Not only did I have an overwhelming urge to scream, but I knew with flashing neon lights that I had to keep a lid on everything. I had to carefully straightjacket my emotions and the more I did that, the more I wanted to scream. It was a vicious circle, and I was so looking forward to being done with it.

My dad was laying down on the couch with a beer on the coffee table when we came in. I think he thought we were mom, because he acted like he needed to hide a body when he heard the door close behind me. Sara rushed him like she always did.

"Where did you guys go today?" he asked. I suppose it was a testament to how much my parents trusted me that there was no anger or concern about it. No missed texts wondering where we were. They were with me, so they were fine. I mean, obviously during the school year I couldn't just take off with my sisters, but during the summer I was expected to keep them occupied. Plus, cell phones are useless when we're at the beach, so most of the time, my parents don't bother checking in on us before dinner.

"We saw sea lions!" Sara squealed.

"Jake took us to the aquarium!" Jordan added.

My dad was all smiles as he looked at his three daughters. I wondered if he saw the conflict in my eyes. Did he see it? Did he know that I knew his secret?

No. How could he?

He pulled all three of us down to the couch. Sara and Jordan were all giggles and happy and I… I was what I was. I wore the mask of a happy girl. Happy daughter that could stand to look at her dad.

Dad asked about dinner and we told him we had a late lunch. He finished his beer and put the empty in the recycling. My sisters and I may have just had McDonald's, but Dad was hungry and wanted to have dinner for Mom when she got home. He ordered subs and salads from Mom's favorite sandwich shop. Then, somehow - and I'm not sure how he did it - but dad talked us into a game night. We were playing Monopoly when Mom got home an hour later.

Mom had no problem being left out of the game - she hates Monopoly - but she grabbed a sandwich and watched us play from the couch after her customary after-work shower. Mom looked like a completely different person in her tank top and sweats compared to how she looked in her business suit. My parents had somewhat oppositional outlooks on their careers. Like when my dad got home and changed out of his business suit, that's when he became himself again. The suit and tie, that was just a uniform to him. He saw work as the means to an end, to make money and afford stuff. Mom was a lawyer because she loved it. She didn't spend all that time and energy in the office just to pay the bills. But I think Mom was almost two different people sometimes.

I was still mad at Dad. But it had been a long time since we'd had this kind of family time. Mom may have hated Monopoly, she hated losing more, and she swooped in to help Sara, who still didn't have the math skills to really understand the game. Mom wasn't enough to save her though, and Jordan's hotel on Marvin Gardens wiped them out. Soon, Jordan was out too. She had hit up Dad's properties twice in the same turn. She had rolled doubles and first hit a hotel on one of his red properties, but her second roll put her on Pennsylvania Avenue, with two houses. She had to mortgage most of her properties, so when she hit me two turns later on St. James Place, she was toast.

Eventually, I crushed Dad. He landed on Boardwalk...with a hotel. It was a risky business venture, putting the money into Boardwalk and Park Place. And I had to trade all my railroads to Jordan to get Park Place, but the look on my dad's face when he hit the most expensive square in the game made my evening.

Honestly, I guess it's not that interesting, but the part that mattered to me is that even though I knew what he was doing, I knew he still loved us. And knowing that actually made me feel worse somehow. He loved us. We just weren't enough to make him happy. Well, maybe that's selfish. But Mom wasn't enough to make him happy, and that legitimately crushed me.

But I reminded myself that Dad was a grown man, and I certainly was not my father's keeper. Besides, evening meant that it was nearly time to meet my friends.

Throughout the game, I'd been texting Melissa, Cassie, and Tobias. I was pissed off at Tobias for the bat ray thing at first, but that situation evolved. See, Tobias had apparently just acquired the ray so it would go torpid, making an already docile animal appear even more docile to my seven-year-old sister. But Cassie knew the rays were sea lion prey, and she had mistaken Tobias's actions for an actual plan. So I was then pissed at her for the bat ray thing. Then of course no one actually has a better plan and we all agreed to meet at Cassie's - by which of course, I mean Elfangor's - around midnight. At that point, I just opted to be pissed at everyone. Fortunately, when you're playing Monopoly, looking pissed is appropo about half the time anyway.

Melissa's text were a different story entirely. I wanted to get together for some girl time, still. I needed someone to talk to about what was going on with my dad, and the more I texted her, the more I realized how alone she felt at home. I couldn't imagine my parents being Controllers, but then again, I couldn't imagine spending enough time with them to be able to even tell the difference. Mom was an important person, not just to us, but to the county. I hated to admit it to myself, but like Chapman, she was a high value target for the Yeerks.

I was nearly certain my dad was not a Controller, though. Not one of those teenager "can't happen to me" things, but I had to assume if my dad was host to an alien brain slug, that slug would probably know better than to cheat on a lawyer. I mean, yes, Mom isn't that kind of lawyer, but she knows a lot of them. Then again, my dad deals with a decent number of lawyers too. Still, your wife being an assistant district attorney is certainly going to complicate matters in the long run. Then of course my brain decided to do that thing it does and I remembered that we had no clue how many people at the school could also be Controllers. My dad could be cheating on Mom with a Controller.

Ugh, why does life have to be so fucking complicated?

Finally, it was time for showers and bed. I sighed inwardly, wondering if I was going to bring any of the Monterey Bay home with me after morphing. It would be a little awkward if I smelled like the beach in the morning. Seemed unlikely, but I wasn't sure how the technology worked. I mean, Elfangor and I had both morphed out of what were surely fatal injuries, yet Tobias still had scars and Cassie and I still had pierced ears. There was some inconsistency there. Or maybe the technology only fixes the parts that you actually want to fix. You bet your ass, I was focusing on that injury when I morphed out of grizzly. But I've had my ears pierced for longer than I can remember. Zero effort on my part toward "fixing" my ears. Plus, that's just how I'd picture myself whenever I demorphed, so I guess that's just how it's supposed to work. I wonder if it would fix a bad haircut.

The TV in my room is actually my computer monitor. My PC is hooked up through the HDMI port. I have Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, not to mention a library of downloaded movies I can play. The messed up thing about torrenting movies is we have legit copies of nearly everything I've downloaded, but when you have Kindles, it makes playing DVDs or BluRay discs difficult. So I just download the MP4 files and throw it on their memory cards. If Sara wants to watch Moana or Zootopia in the car, technically we have paid for both movies. Yeah, I'm sure that'd hold up in court. Really, I guess that's what UltraViolet is for, but that system honestly gives me a headache.

Anyway, I sat in bed scrolling through my Hulu list. I wasn't in the mood to watch anything, really. Maybe I'd catch up on Supergirl or The Flashover the summer, but I wasn't in the state of mind to watch either right then. Anything I put on would just be white noise and I wouldn't remember any of it by morning. But unlike yesterday, I wasn't so impatient to get out of the house.

Sneaking out of the house at night to sit around the campfire with my friends, that could arguably be considered normal teenage behavior. And maybe it was just a level of harmless rebellion. We weren't going out there to do any of the "normal" possibly-destructive things that teenagers could get up to. We weren't drinking, weren't having sex, we weren't vandalizing the town, and we weren't smoking pot or doing drugs. Well, actually, my parents probably wouldn't care about the pot, really. Mom had her own stash I wasn't supposed to know about. California is kinda progressive about that stuff. And okay fine, I'm aware that by "sneaking out" I mean morphing into an owl and then flying out of my bedroom window like fucking Hedwig. I know that part isn't normal. And we were meeting in the woods to have conversations with an actual extraterrestrial alien, an agenda that really throws normal against the wall like normal had done something to seriously piss us off.

But tonight, we had a mission.

Our first real mission since we had come back from the Yeerk Pool. And going into this without Elfangor, I wasn't sure how to feel. True, he hadn't gone with us to the Lexington Zoological Gardens either, but we'd known he'd be waiting for us when we got back. The zoo mission was small in scope, but it had been in preparation for the larger mission, a mission we would do with him. It just turned out to be the only mission we'd do with him. And this was in preparation of something bigger. From here, we were going to the Farallon Islands to find whales. And after that, the cargo ship.

All of it without Elfangor.

So I sat in my bed and watched - of all the things I could have watched - Star VS the Forces of Evil for almost two hours . Don't judge me. I have sisters, and of all the shit we watch, I actually like that one. After four or five episodes, it was time to go. I sometimes sleep with the TV on, so I let the cartoon play as I opened the window.

It seemed fitting, I guess. I imagined a version of myself that was happy, that got to stay in the comfort of her own bed and watch cartoons. A Rachel who got to be ordinary, who didn't have to know her dad was unfaithful, who didn't have to deal with aliens or morph into bait. A Rachel that knew nothing beyond another day with her sisters, who didn't know how badly Melissa hurt inside, who didn't know she could be more than lacrosse captain.

Fuck it, let that Rachel have her cartoons. I was going to find me some goddamned sea lions.

* * *

It was only a few minutes flying before I landed in the woods of the Moore Creek Preserve. I wasn't the first one there, but I wasn't the last. ‹Who's here?› I asked as I landed.

‹I'm here,› Cassie answered, ‹and so is Tobias.›

‹Waiting on Jake and Marco again, huh?› I said.

‹It's his mom,› Tobias answered.

‹Wait, what? What's up with Aunt Jean?› I asked.

Cassie laughed in thought-speech, which - telepathy notwithstanding - is a beautifully human thing to hear. ‹Apparently she's having some severe midlife crisis stuff now that, and I'm quoting here, her 'babies are all grown up.'›

Even in owl morph, I couldn't help but shake my head. Aunt Jean was a wonderful child therapist, but I guess no matter how much you know about juvenile development, the fact that kids grow up still comes as a surprise. ‹Parents,› I said. ‹They can't wait for us to grow up, but they'll cry when we're gone.›

As soon as I said it, I felt embarrassed. Tobias was there.

But Cassie jumped on the gap. ‹At any rate, she's been a little more focused on Jake the last few days, so he's had to wait till she was asleep to get out here.›

An idea percolated. ‹Hmm, I wonder if I can't pawn my little sisters off on Aunt Jean for a little bit. Let her take out some of that empty nest syndrome on her favorite nieces.›

‹Don't you fall into that same category?› Tobias asked.

I sighed. ‹Yeah, technically. But honestly, with Jake and I being as close in age as we are, I don't think time with me would be as helpful. We have kind of a weird relationship, me and Aunt Jean.›

‹Okay, how?› Cassie asked.

‹Well Mom and Dad have all daughters and Aunt Jean and Uncle Steve have all sons. We've lived less than two miles apart for essentially our whole lives, so in some sense, we're like the daughters Aunt Jean never had and Jake and Tom are the sons that Mom and Dad never had.›

‹Yeah, I can see how that would be an interesting dynamic,› Cassie said.

I wanted off the family thread. The longer it went on, the more I felt like we were being insensitive with Tobias there. ‹In any case, apparently we're going with the bait plan.›

‹That was not really what I had in mind,› Tobias said defensively.

‹Yeah, yeah, whatever,› I said. I really wasn't that mad about it anymore. I understood on the rational level that this was the best option we had, but I still wasn't that fond of the potential for sea lion induced injuries. Or worse.

The plan was predicated on being able to get away from any sea lion that could happen upon us. With our array of normal stingray senses and human intelligence, we were betting heavily on our ability to coordinate and communicate underwater in a way that bat rays just don't do. But the fact remained that at any point, one of us could be bitten, and once a sea lion had a grip on a ray, it was likely to swim off with it. So any of us had a bad day, it would get worse before any of the others could demorph to try to help. Oh, and by help, I mean be a human in the bay trying to swim after a sea lion.

Marco was the next to arrive, and he seemed as eager to do this as I was. ‹I was really hoping we weren't going to have to wait on anyone,› he said.

I knew what he meant. The longer we sat here, perched in the dark branches, the more sense it made to bail out. We all knew we were about to do something dangerous and dumb, and it only seemed increasingly dumber and more dangerous with each passing moment.

The valley looked different without the light of a fire. Owl eyes see in the dark like nothing else can, but looking at everything by the light of the moon and stars, the shadows were different. I could see the starlight glinting off the metallic surface of the Andalite communications array. The firepit was nothing more than a dark spot in the ground, and it seemed colder even though my thick layer of feathers made me almost impervious to wind and cold. I knew it was psychological. And I knew it was stupid to be afraid of the dark, especially as an owl. But the absence of the fire made the whole valley seem temporary. It was a glaring void that screamed at us that we weren't staying.

But Jake was only a few minutes behind Marco.

‹Sorry, guys, couldn't get away.›

‹Dude,› Tobias said, ‹we get it. You're cool. But I think we should head on out now that we're all here.›

‹Right. Come on.›

We weren't flying to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Depending on how this went, that plan might actually get pushed back a night. Or maybe I was just hoping we weren't going to piggyback missions the way I was certain we were going to. But in any case, we didn't need to go to Monterey to see sea lions. We could go to the Wharf for that.

The Santa Cruz Wharf is, so far as I know, the longest wharf on the U. S. Pacific coast. It's basically a full avenue that just juts out into the Monterey Bay for half a mile. It has a paved street supported by countless wood pilings, and the Wharf is a great local spot to see sea lions. We only went to the Coast Guard Pier in Monterey because it was next to the Aquarium, and also because we thought the rocky breakwater might be a more reliable overnight spot than the wooden slats of the Wharf. If we didn't find sea lions here at the wharf - and we weren't sure exactly where they slept at night - then the best spot to try to find them in the Santa Cruz area would probably be the erroneously-named Seal Rock. But we had limited time to do this. Flying to Monterey and back was going to take the better part of two hours. And this was either going to pay off and we'd acquire a sea lion, or we'd find nothing and the attempt would simply count as morph practice for the bat ray. So Seal Rock wasn't really on the table, thankfully.

One by one, we landed on the beach. Five owls that had no business whatsoever being on the sandy shore amidst the driftwood. Last thing we needed was some beach jogger running past and finding us, but we'd seen no one from the air. As far as owl eyes can see in the dark, we were clear. Demorphing was its usual horror show, but in minutes, there were three boys in boxer briefs and two girls in swimwear. I had taken a page out of Cassie's playbook and opted for last year's one-piece. If I was morphing in seawater, I wasn't doing it in my yoga pants.

But I shivered in the breeze, feeling goosebumps on my naked legs and arms. It was cold on the beach. Even in June, the waters of the Monterey Bay are cold, and so the breeze off the water can be brisk. Further up, the sand may have held lingering warmth of the sun, but as close to the water as we were, any remnants of daylight had since been washed away. The waters were as calm as they tend to get, and the sea looked black in the night, broken by myriad peaks of waves, glittering in the light of the waning moon. It looked beautiful.

Or it would have if I hadn't known was was coming next. It was time to morph the bat ray.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

* * *

The most bizarre thing about morphing is how quickly you get used to it. I've been an owl many times over, and it's become almost second nature. Like anything else, I guess, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. But we only had so many morphs, so maybe it's too soon to make broad statements like that. I could turn into a raven just as easily as the owl. It was our first bird morph and something of our go-to flying morph when we could actually be out during the day. We picked up the owl simply for the bump in night vision. I could become a raccoon if I wanted to, but the only time I had was when we had done morph practice in the woods. I wasn't part of the mission that needed it, I was actually just focused on learning how to morph clothes. I'd been lucky enough to morph straight out of my underwear and I'd had to demorph and get dressed behind the privacy curtain we'd improvised out of an old tarp. The same tarp that was now draped over the tent. Instead of morphing a raccoon and breaking into Chapman's office, I'd been that damn cat. I could become Melissa's cat anytime I wanted, and I'd already done that more times than I really wanted to.

I had two other morphs, and neither of them were associated with good memories. I could morph a bull grizzly if I had to, but I've only ever morphed the bear twice. It was powerful, but the sense of invulnerability was misleading. I had almost died, so it wasn't something I saw as being an easy morph. To pull off a morph, you have to concentrate, and the bear wasn't something I wanted to do on a regular basis. It definitely wasn't second nature.

And the only other animal I could become was a flying squirrel. It was the smallest thing Cassie had had in her barn at the time. Agile, a good climber, and it could see in the dark, we picked it because it could fit into tight spaces. It became an escape morph, and in that regard, it had done what we'd needed it to do. But I would be almost as apprehensive morphing the flying squirrel again as I was morphing the stingray.

And technically, I could morph Kimberly Chapman and Elfangor, but those fall into the hell no category.

The first time morphing is always the most difficult. There are things about becoming an animal that are sometimes shocking and unpredictable. Part and parcel to the animal's anatomy is sensory input that is often times much different than what we experience as humans. For example, it goes without saying that owls can see in the dark, but they also don't see color that well. That's true of the raccoon and the squirrel, too. And I learned that ravens can see ultraviolet, which is unbelievably cool, but also disorienting as hell at first.

But nothing any of us had morphed to this point had gills.

Actually, Jake was the only one of us that had morphed anything cold-blooded before, and we were going a long way back the evolutionary tree with this ray.

Tobias was actually the first one to start the change. I watched as he lost all his hair. Then his skin darkened and paled at the same time. From his nose all the way up his head, his skin turned black. But his mouth, jaw, and his front turned milk-white. Which in the moonlight wasn't a far stretch for Tobias. He was always a little pale and gaunt, and really he looked like a vampire out of a Stephanie Meyer book at times. With his face in monochrome, though, he looked like Batman for a minute.

Then, things got stranger.

His face melted into a shapeless mass. Rays, like sharks, are cartilaginous fish. That means they don't really have bones the same way we do. So his nose, his cheekbones, that stuff all softened and flattened. His neck vanished as the tissue of his shoulders turned into a web all the way up to his face. His eyes wandered to the outside of his head, toward the ears he no longer had, then pushed outward, protruding from the rest of his face. Where his ears used to be, a specialized gill opening - called a spiracle, I'd learned in the car - opened in his head.

He started shrinking rapidly, from over five foot tall down to about my mid-thigh. His arms became almost fetal stubs before they completely fused and spread out like a cape. His torso collapsed like pancake, and before he lost the ability to stand, all of us were treated to the sight of gill openings appearing in his ribcage. He gasped soundlessly as he realized his lungs were gone, and with a graceless splash, his legs finally withered away and he fell forward into the water.

The wingtips extended out to their full length, and the last thing to change was the tail. The whiplike appendage shot out behind him and flicked back and forth before the venomous spines emerged.

Start to finish, it had maybe taken about five minutes. We could each of us morph from human to bird in about half or a third of that time. That's what I mean about repeat morphs. Maybe it's because the mental image of the morph is clearer after the first time being the animal, maybe it's just not as scary. Or maybe the Escafil technology remembers the difference in genetic structure and so the pathways from human to animal become easier. Who knows?

Aximili might, actually.

We watched Tobias swim around in circles, his wing-like fins draping over the surface of the sand like a living blanket.

"Tobias?" I asked, loud as I dared. "Can you hear us?"

No answer.

Cassie put a hand in the water and splashed back and forth. "Tobias," she whispered loudly.

The ray swam up to her hand, then let her fingers glide past his skin. ‹Okay, I can't really hear you guys underwater. I mean, I can hear you, but I can't really make out what you're saying. So just listen for now. The good news is that the ray doesn't have a ton of panic instincts. The bad news, there's a point mid-morph where you won't be able to breathe at all. Just push through it and get in the water as soon as possible.›

I took a breath, and sighed. I waded out into the water, about knee-deep. That seemed deep enough. It was cold enough on my calves, and I didn't want to lose my legs in waist-deep water. I focused on the smell of the water, the sand beneath my toes, on the sounds of the waves, and I tried to form the memory in my head of the ray at the touch pool.

I saw the external changes when Tobias had done this, but I could feel the internal changes now. I didn't notice on him how the jaw rearranged itself. I didn't notice his teeth melting together. Finally, I reached the point he had warned us. My lungs tightened and I knew this was my last breath of fresh air till we were done. The claustrophobia kicked in, and I had to keep a lid on it. I knew I could hold my breath for more than a minute. The changes had stopped when my concentration had broken, but they resumed, and I pushed forward. My first breath through my gills was a bizarre sensation to say the very least. The best way I can describe it is like drinking cold water, the sensation of it flowing down the back of your throat. It's like that, but it never stops.

And truth be told, it was only cold for a little bit. The warmth of my mammalian human body faded quickly, and actually not fast enough. As I became cold-blooded, the ray was uncomfortable with blood as warm as it was. I wondered how hot the water would need to be for a ray to have a body temp near human levels. But heat left my body quickly, and I was surprising comfortable in the cold water.

Eyesight was a weird thing for the ray. I could see decently well, actually. Especially in the shallows, I could see distances well enough, and at any rate, I could see better in the water than a human could without goggles. I didn't necessarily have fantastic vision, though, and as I swam around, getting used to the ray's senses and instincts, I realized I was much more interested in the smell of the water and the electrical receptors that lined the bottom of my wings and around my mouth. Rays found food like a metal detector found an old coin in the sand, and really the eyes seemed more for minding my surroundings. I noted the other black shapes in water, decided they weren't anything that was going to eat me, and I swam on.

Bat rays fly underwater. I used my wings exactly the same way an owl would, and for as massively different as it was to be underwater, breathing through my gills, it only took a few minutes to get used to it.

‹This isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be,› Cassie said.

‹We haven't gone into deeper waters yet,› I pointed out.

‹Oh, thanks for that, Rae,› she said.

‹Any time, sweetie.›

‹Seriously, guys,› Jake said. ‹We've gotta get this done. Keep your eyes out for shadows.›

‹If you get bit, morph,› I said.

‹Right, what she said,› Jake agreed.

We only needed to swim a half mile down, and that was nothing to us. I could see the growth on the wharf pilings, the barnacles, the mussels, and what I assumed had to be sponges. I had just learned what the hell a tunicate was, both from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Blue Planetepisode I'd watched in the car. They're just type of marine invertebrate, kind of like a coral polyp, but not really. The group includes sea squirts and sea tulips. As if anyone but a marine biologist would need to know that. But I saw a number of them as well on the pilings and on the rocks that lined the seabed. I could only really make out detail in things close by. Marine plants drifted in the current. Most of what I could see was just silhouettes in the dark and if not for the moonlight filtering through the surface, I'm not sure what I'd be able to see. As it was, it felt like we were in a pet store after hours.

We only saw a few fish swimming through. That wasn't surprising. This was feeding time for most of the sharks that live in our waters. Threshers and leopard sharks, mostly, but white sharks do occasionally make the news in the area. I wasn't worried about that though. When we actually made it to the Farallon Islands, that's when I'd worry about sharks. A far more pressing concern was the intrusive instinct to scan for clams or crabs. That and Marco couldn't resist narrating everything.

Seriously, while I can rag on the boy all day, Marco can be funny at times. And maybe he was just trying to diffuse some of the tension we were all feeling. So he did his very best Blue Planet narration… if that documentary had been narrated by Christian Bale. In his Batman voice.

We made it a little more than halfway before we saw the first sea lion. Seeing it in water, it looked far more dangerous than they had on land from behind chain-link fencing. I've seen them before, obviously. And I knew exactly how agile they could be in the water. A sea lion could turn on a dime underwater, and they were agile enough to dodge great whites if they could see them coming. Till now, I'd always seen them as playful animals. And while I knew they were towards the top of the food chain - minus orcas and sharks - now that I was a ray, I actually saw them as killers.

The sea lion wasn't hunting, though. It swam past us and I saw the dark shape contrasted against the surface. I could hear the splash in surround sound as the sea lion hopped out of the water. The ray felt sounds in the water the way I could feel heavy bass in my feet in the car, and it was a very tactile form of hearing.

Swimming toward the surface, I realized that we had come to the part of the wharf where the sea lions were sleeping. It was obvious that not all of them were asleep, but for the most part, the took no notice of us as we swam past.

‹Now what?› Marco asked.

‹I was thinking the same thing,› I said.

The most dangerous part here was that we needed to be human in order to acquire the sea lions, and none of us were completely sure how that would go. The water here was deep enough that morphing to human posed a real risk of drowning. I could morph back near the surface, but any way the change occurred, I was sure that I would sink somewhat before I had enough of my arms and legs to actually swim. Then, from there, I'd have to get out of the water and touch an animal that could bite through an ocean sunfish. Sometimes, looking up things online is a bad idea.

‹Hmm,› Cassie said. ‹This seemed really straightforward in my head.›

‹Ha,› I said. ‹The straightforward part was they were going to try to eat us.› As soon as I said it, I realized that was still our best bet here. We needed something to get their attention, and something to keep the one we acquired occupied while we touched it. ‹Wait,› I said, ‹I have an idea.›

Flapping my pectoral fins, I skimmed the ocean floor. I noticed the silhouettes of the other bat rays above me. ‹Care to share your idea?› Jake asked.

‹Simple,› I said. ‹Bait.›

‹I thought we were the bait,› Tobias said.

‹Well, if the sea lions aren't in the water, that's not going to help,› I said.

‹Okay, so we're going to catch a fish or something?› Tobias asked.

‹That's the plan.›

The others soon joined me in searching the ocean floor. Between the rocks and the growth of the wharf pilings, finding bare sand became a bit of a challenge. As we went deeper, there was less light and I relied more and more on a weird sense of touch in the water. As I approached the rocks, for example, it was like I could feel the change in water pressure. I can't really describe it. But I realized that I could swim easily in water with limited visibility.

Again, we didn't find a lot of fish. They were either in deeper water or they were hiding better than we could find them. Bat rays aren't fish-eaters. So it should come as no real surprise that I found a large lobster before I found any kind of fish. The lobster was a cantankerous son of a bitch, I'll give him that, but there wasn't much the crustacean could do to a bat ray. Catching a lobster was an interesting experience. I just opened my mouth and even I was shocked at the vacuum pressure. I sucked a whole lobster into my crushing tooth plates, and since the lobster was kind of perpendicular to me, I ended up with its back in my jaws. In that position, there wasn't much it could do with its massive pincers. I had to bite back on the ray's natural instinct to eat the thing.

‹Okay,› I said. ‹I have a lobster.›

‹Damn,› Marco said. ‹Twenty minutes at the beach and we have a lobster dinner. Anyone else want to do this again? Drop a basket or something and fill it with lobsters?›

‹I for one, have no intention of morphing out of my lungs again,› Cassie said.

‹Guys, this thing is really trying to get out of my mouth. At least one of you needs to demorph.›

Marco was by far the best swimmer among us, so he got the fun job of demorphing first. He had three bat rays nearby. Their job was to keep him near the surface to the extent that three bat rays could help. Once he got to his full human weight, he'd be beyond their ability to offer support, but we figured he'd be able to tread water by then, anyway.

Morphing back to human, he obviously wanted to stay close to the surface as much as possible. And our apprehension about the switch from gills back to lungs was in fact a valid concern. But morphing back to human was always easier than morphing to animal, and it only took about half as long for Marco to get all the way back to his human body. It seemed his lungs came back about a minute or so into the morph, based on the way he forced himself upward. Jake, Cassie, and Tobias offered life support, helping him stay near the surface, but really he didn't need it.

My plan had been to swim up to him and hand him the now-dead lobster, which he would then hold while the rest of us demorphed. Of course, the part we hadn't counted on was that the splashing caused by Marco demorphing, combined with three bat rays near the surface, had aroused the sea lions' curiosity.

We didn't have any time to react. From the first splash - and there were multiple splashes - to the time I heard Cassie scream took less than half a minute.

The sea lion bit into her right wing and blood trailed into the ocean around us. It took a full bite out of her wing with no effort at all.

‹Cassie!› Jake roared.

‹Demorph!› Tobias shouted.

The sea lion swam off with Cassie, and all of us swam after. Most of the sea lions had apparently either been startled or simply curious, but I was aware others were following us. Actually, in retrospect, I think Cassie's attacker was worried he was going to have to share his meal. If there hadn't been other sea lions in the area, he may have actually just eaten Cassie where he found her. Marco was doing a full breaststroke above us, but a human trying to follow a sea lion or a school of rays is just an exercise in futility. And the sound of his swimming just made it difficult to keep track of the other sea lions in the water around us.

Cassie was easy to find, but only because as bat rays, we could smell her blood in the water.

‹Cassie?!› Jake shouted. ‹Can you hear us?›

We found out that the reason Cassie wasn't answering us was because she was already demorphing. The sea lion was gone. Apparently, when the bat ray in your mouth doubles and size and grows legs, it's best to maybe find something else to eat. That didn't mean it wouldn't circle back. Or that the other lions would leave us alone.

Jake and Tobias swam up to her, Marco finally caught up to us, and it was right then that I realized I was still holding the damn lobster in my mouth. Once Cassie was back to human, we got shit into high gear.

It wasn't safe to stay in morph at this point, and I'd known something like this could happen, but my premonition didn't preclude panic.

Jake was next to demorph, and no one questioned that. His girlfriend had almost been eaten. But the second Jake was treading water and Marco was free to let go of Cassie, I realized I needed to let go of the lobster if I was going to demorph.

Tobias, however, wasn't a strong swimmer, and he didn't want to demorph till he was somewhere he could get out of the water. I was the only one left with thought-speech capability, so if I didn't talk him into demorphing, no one else would. But I was as worried about Cassie as anyone, and I didn't have the strength of mind to argue with Tobias. He knew the risks involved in staying in morph. If he was more afraid of drowning than he was a sea lion attack, then there wasn't much I could say to change his mind. So Tobias took the lobster.

The change back to human from a gill-breather is weird. A factor I hadn't really counted on is that I grew considerably before I lost my gills, and maybe that added more oxygen to my blood. No idea, really. But there was a massive pressure pushing in on my chest as my gills vanished and the minute it took to grow lungs was impossibly uncomfortable. I gasped forcefully as I broke the surface. My skin gradually returned to normal, and when my hair cascaded out behind me, I knew I was fully human.

And I was freezing.

Cassie was understandably freaked out, but she was completely uninjured once she was back to human. The cold became our first and most immediate problem. It was hard to swim back to the wharf, even though the sea lion had only taken Cassie maybe thirty yards. Swimming in cold water is dangerous, and I knew then that there was no way in hell I was overstating the value of wetsuits.

By the time we got close again, my fingers and toes hurt and the sea lions were agitated. Humans are not graceful swimmers. I remember reading something - or maybe it was something on Animal Planet - that humans are actually like the only ape that swims at all. But because we generally swim at the surface of the water, our style of swimming is very splashy, and the sea lions knew we were coming well in advance.

They did better with this, though. The Santa Cruz Wharf is a massive tourist trap. I mean, it's a cool place to go, but for the most part, it's just restaurants, souvenir shops, and boat tours. I think there's a dive shop there too, but besides Dolphin - a restaurant my dad likes for it's blackened swordfish - we don't really go there. But people do go to the Wharf, and the sea lions are a lot more used to humans swimming than they are to bat rays morphing into humans.

Jake pulled himself up out of the water and onto one of the wooden platform slats beneath the Wharf. All of us were beyond caring by that point, and the shining eyes of some twenty or thirty sea lions looked at us in the dark. The nearest one wasn't afraid at all, and I heard him barking at us. Jake reached down and helped pull Cassie out. Then Marco. Tobias swam past and I felt the wet velvet texture of his skin on my thigh as he past. I wiggled my fingers back and forth, gesturing to him. And seconds later, I was handing a lobster to Jake.

It was a good sized lobster, maybe ten inches long. And once Jake had it, Marco pulled me up onto the wooden beam. Tobias finally demorphed, and I moved down the beam to give him more room. Five teenagers sat hip to hip on a beam among two dozen curious sea lions. It sounds cool, but it wasn't. It was dark and creepy under the Wharf, I had seaweed in my hair, my eyes stung from saltwater, I was dripping wet and even though I was finally out of the cold water, the summer breeze did little to warm me. And on top of all of it, sitting on the wooden beam in nothing but my swimsuit, I was certain I was going to end up with a splinter in my ass.

Jake held up the lobster, hoping against hope that one of the animals would want it. I don't know if sea lions even eat lobsters. Jake tore off a claw. He cut his hand on the shell, but numbed by the cold and completely out of fucks to give, he didn't care. I have to reiterate that it is very illegal to feed a wild sea lion in California. Not like jaywalking illegal, or no parking illegal, or any of those odd, made-up municipal fines, but federal statute violation illegal. But again, no fucks left to give, and I doubt the sea lion was going to rat us out. Jake broke off a section of leg and tossed it to the nearest sea lion. The lion caught it effortlessly, and whether lobsters are something they usually eat or not, this one seemed to like it. The lion barked again, and Jake tossed another piece of lobster at it. But then when it barked again, Jake refused to give it anything else.

The lion didn't like this game at all.

When the lobster tidbits stopped, the sea lion ambled along its own wood beam, then with a nimble grace I wouldn't have believed for such a large animal, it maneuvered around a wharf piling till it was on the beam in front of us. It was close enough that when it barked, I could smell its fishy breath. Jake tossed it the full claw, and I could hear those powerful jaws crack the lobster shell like it was nothing.

He tore off the other claw and held it up in the moonlight so the sea lion could see it, but he didn't throw it. He handed the rest of the lobster to Cassie, and I'm not sure if she even registered that she was holding it, she was so tired and freaked out.

"Guys," he said casually. "Stay here, but be ready."

"Wait, what?" I asked.

That's when Jake jumped into the water.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

* * *

When Jake hit the water, I was stunned, but a minute later, he was treading water and he still had the lobster claw in his hand.

The sea lion dove into the ink-black water below and came up within a few feet of Jake's face. If I was surprised, my cousin had to be stunned, even if this is exactly what he'd wanted to have happen. Sea lions - to the best of my knowledge, anyway - have never killed anyone. But I know for a fact that they can be very cavalier with the biting. About a week before Elfangor crashed, there was a news story about a sea lion in British Columbia grabbing a little girl by her dress and pulling her off a dock.

That video went viral.

But Jake just calmly and slowly held out his left hand so that the sea lion could see the big lobster claw. "Good boy," he said. "Guys, this is going to be quick, okay?"

I moved to the edge of the wooden beam, ready to jump down the two feet into the water. Jake slowly held the lobster claw out, holding it tightly in case the lion just tried to take it from him. I don't think that was really a risk, though. I was certain the sea lion knew there was more lobster meat, even if it didn't know Jake wasn't the one holding it. Jake had positioned himself so that when the sea lion took the claw, it would have to go past him - and under us. Suddenly the sea lion lurched forward and took the lobster claw.

And Jake's other hand came down on it's back, right at the base of the neck.

"Now, guys."

The second Jake touched it, the sea lion became paralyzed. Its head came to the surface, the lobster claw still in its mouth. It really looked like it had been out all night drinking and had just passed out in the water.

All of us splashed in, almost all at once. Our combined splash was enough to scare one of the other lions off the Wharf. Cassie reached for the animal's face and made sure it wasn't going to drown. Tobias latched a hand next to Jake's, and Marco and I both ended up more toward its stomach area.

It only took half a minute for all five of us to touch and acquire the sea lion. Everything else had just been getting here. And now we were done.

Tobias was the first one out of the water. Poor boy, I think he had some full blown phobia of drowning, so I was already thinking about getting him to the beach again. He was already halfway to owl when Jake let the sea lion go. It swam away like a bat out of hell for a few minutes, but then like some kind of idiot, it came right back up to Jake and barked again. I couldn't help but smile. Jake shook his head, and Cassie handed him the rest of the lobster.

"You earned it, buddy," Jake said. And he threw the lobster as far as he could. He didn't want the sea lion coming back up to us.

Once again, all of us had to pull up out of the water, and I was more than happy to be done being cold and wet. I followed Tobias's lead and morphed to owl. The second I was fully bird, I was happy. Owls can handle almost any weather, and I had never been so pleased to have feathers. Marco and Cassie were nearly finished morphing, and Jake would be there in a minute.

‹Alright,› I said, flapping my wings. ‹Let's go home.›

‹We're not done yet,› Marco said.

‹Seriously?› Tobias asked.

‹He's right,› Cassie said. They were her first words since the sea lion had grabbed her. Her voice sounded stressed, but she continued. ‹This was rough, I'm not gonna lie, but we still have the other half of the plan.›

‹Does anyone even know what time it is?› I asked.

‹It can't have been even an hour, I don't think,› Marco answered.

‹Jake?› I asked.

Jake didn't answer for a long minute. He was thinking. We were already tired, and I wondered if we could do this. I replayed the night in my head. We had landed at the end of the Wharf and morphed bat rays. Maybe about ten minutes before all of us were morphed and in control of the ray. We swam the length of the Wharf. That couldn't have taken even twenty minutes at most. Then I went looking for that lobster, that took less than ten minutes. Then Cassie had been bitten and most of us had demorphed and swum back to the Wharf… Marco was right. I couldn't think this had taken more than an hour. Maybe a full hour, at most, but probably no more than forty-five minutes. It was in all likelihood earlier than midnight.

And this was training wheels compared to later. We were going to have to find and acquire the sperm whale. Then we had to stow away on the cargo ship, probably, as Marco said, for some twenty or more hours. Then we had to dive down almost a quarter mile into the abyss. We still had no answer regarding the doors on the ship. And we had no idea how we were going to get Aximili back to the surface.

‹We're going,› Jake said finally. I hated to admit it, but it was the right call.

‹Ugh, dammit,› Tobias said. ‹C'mon. It's a bitch to fly over water, so head inland first.›

That caught my attention. ‹And how do you know that?› I asked.

‹Because sometimes, when I have nothing better do, I morph into the redtail and fly around town,› he said.

‹Wait, seriously?› Cassie asked.

‹Well the first day I did it was last Friday. Jake and Rachel had Tom's graduation, you were grounded, and Marco was done. And I had stolen that car with Rachel, so I wanted to kinda keep tabs on my uncle for awhile before I went home.›

Awkward.

‹How did that go?› Marco asked.

‹Do you guys really want to know?› Tobias asked.

‹Not if you don't want to talk about it,› Cassie said, quickly, before anyone could press him.

‹Well, it's an hour's flight to the Aquarium from here. Might as well talk. Talk is good, right Cassie?›

‹Oooh,› she said, pretending to be mad but dripping with amusement. ‹Up yours, T.›

‹Honestly,› Tobias said, ‹my uncle isn't as bad as my aunt. Or her boyfriends. He drinks, he yells, and he can treat me like crap sometimes, but mostly, he just leaves me alone. As long as I have food in the apartment and I don't interfere with his business dealings, he's cool. And when he's not drinking, he really isn't so bad. He likes watching TV, he taught me how to play cards. The problem, of course, is that he drinks pretty often.›

‹I'm sorry,› I said.

‹Not your fault. But after that car went missing, oh, man, you should have seen him scratching his head. I never realized just how stressful it has to be to do something illegal your whole adult life. So the first thing that goes through his head is that one of his crew took it. Not even a problem with that, sometimes the crew borrow cars. But he makes the phone calls, and no one has his car. So then, for like a few minutes, he's thinking maybe it was a bait car or something, and there'll be cops all over the shop. But nothing happens. So it wasn't cops. But then the only thing he can think of is that maybe it got sold out by mistake. He's sold cars off the garage before. Happens sometimes. But no one working that day sold a car or knew of any cars that were for sale. And then that put him on the one theory he can't prove one way or the other.›

‹Okay,› Jake asked. ‹What's that?›

‹A rival crew must have found his shop and stolen it. You know, just to show him that they could. Put the fear of God in him that they could rat him out at any time.›

‹Holy shit,› I said.

‹Yeah, it's weird, because for the first week, he said everything had to be above board. Then he lost too much money and had to go back to work as normal, but he is so damn paranoid.›

‹That sounds like a situation that won't end well,› Jake said, sounding worried.

‹Meh, what happens, happens,› Tobias said, apparently done sharing.

We flew in silence for awhile. We only needed to follow the coast, and we'd get there. If we could have cut across the Monterey Bay itself, it would have been a considerably shorter trip, but Tobias was right. Flying over water was an entirely different proposition for us. The airflow was different over the ocean. Thermals - the vertical columns formed by rising warm air - don't form over water. Leastways, not over cold water. Plus, while our owl morphs were serviceable for a fifty-mile flight to Monterey, they weren't really designed for sustained flight. Owls actually like to find a tree overlooking good hunting grounds. They can fly perfectly fine, but they're not really that transient. If an owl finds a good place, it will generally stay there till something makes it leave, whether it be another owl, human encroachment, or a sudden decrease in prey. The same is true for hawks. Ravens are more transient, maybe, because they can be considered carrion birds. They're better at soaring than our owl morphs, that's for sure. Owls generally fly tree to tree, they don't pick a spot somewhere on a map and then fly there, like we were doing now.

But an albatross was designed to spend its whole life on the wing. It could land on water if needed, but it could also lock the bones of its wing into place and fly nonstop for days, even weeks on end like some kind of living kite. The whole reason we were doing this leg of the mission was because of the albatross and how much easier it would make oceanic flying. But that made me consider something.

I asked the question I think all of us might have been avoiding. ‹So we're going to acquire this albatross so we can fly back after we get Aximili,› I said.

‹Yeah, that's the plan,› Cassie confirmed.

‹Am I the only one curious how Aximili is going to fly back with us?›

Marco sighed. ‹Honesty, I figured we'd just have to find another bird at sea for him to acquire. Unless that weird fish bird can fly over water.›

‹Kafit,› Tobias corrected.

‹Whatever.›

The first thing we had ever seen Elfangor morph was a weird, not-quite bird looking thing. It had some features in common with prehistoric raptor dinosaurs, maybe some kind of six-winged alien vampire bat, but Jake had compared the feather-like quills of the alien creature to the spines of a lionfish, and it wasn't an inaccurate comparison.

‹We could always give him a ride,› Cassie said.

‹What does that mean?› I asked.

‹Well the plan is to have whale morphs. We could swim back, take turns carrying him on our backs.›

Everyone had a good laugh at that, Cassie too. I could just picture an Andalite trying to hold on to a whale while it lumbered along through the water.

‹Oh, man,› Marco said. ‹How fast does a sperm whale even swim? Rachel, Cassie? Either of you remember from the book?›

‹I think they can hit twenty miles an hour,› I said. ‹But they can't maintain that pace.›

‹Christ, that would take more than a dozen remorphs. Not to mention a whole day at sea,› Marco said.

‹Yeah, that's not even close to feasible,› Cassie agreed.

‹How fast did you say the albatross can fly?› Jake asked.

‹Over seventy,› she answered.

‹Damn,› I said. ‹That's not bad.›

‹Well,› she hedged. ‹Maybe. I mean some of that is going to have to deal with wind conditions on the way back, not to mention stopping to demorph and remorph in open ocean.›

‹Yeah,› Jake said. ‹I agree with Rachel, by the way. We need to get those wetsuits. I know we're only going to be in the water for a few minutes at a time, but I did not enjoy that swim back to the Wharf.›

‹Still,› I said, trying not to get onto the wetsuit conversation. I didn't want to get into Tobias's idea just yet. ‹We should get back in less than a day.›

‹I'm more concerned about what we're going to do if the bay doors on the ship aren't big enough for the sperm whale,› Jake said.

‹Oh, I think I have a good Plan B for that,› I said.

‹What, you know something else that can dive that deep?› Tobias asked.

‹No. But in the book, it said sperm whales eat giant squid. And, well, giant squid are smaller than a sperm whale.›

‹That's not really a bad idea,› Marco said.

‹Thanks,› I said dryly.

‹No, sorry. I mean it. How big to they get again?›

‹Well, no one is entirely sure,› I said, ‹The size of the squid has always been kind of exaggerated. Wikipedia says that minus the feeding tentacles, they probably don't even get to be twenty feet long. And, they're squishy.›

‹Squishy?› Jake said suspiciously.

‹I mean if a whale wanted to say, I don't know, shove a squid violently through the bay door of a spaceship…›

‹Oh my gentle Jesus,› Marco said in a overly dramatic tone. ‹You guys know she's kidding. Please, tell me we're not actually going to shove a squid into a spaceship.›

Silence.

‹Do you have a better idea?› Tobias asked.

‹We're getting an Andalite,› Cassie reminded, ‹Not Geppetto. It's not like we can just swallow him and bring him back up.›

Marco sounded like he wanted to cry in desperation. ‹It scares me that that is now our best idea. Seriously, can't we just steal a submarine from the Marine Institute?›

‹Yeah, like that wouldn't get on the news,› Jake said flatly. ‹Besides,› he added a bit sheepishly, ‹I already looked into that. Turns out those submarines can't really go out on their own. They drop them from other research vessels. Wasn't feasible.›

None of us said a damn thing for a solid two minutes.

Of course Marco was the first to have something to say to that. ‹I am both impressed and terrified that you even considered that. Hey, we're coming up on the Aquarium guys.›

Finally. My wings felt like they wanted to fall off. Like I said, owls aren't built for destination flying.

We landed on the roof of the Tentacles building because honestly, how often do you get to demorph on a roof with fiberglass tentacles? And also because the giant, fiberglass tentacles gave us just a little bit of added cover. You know, just in case the Monterey Bay Aquarium happened to have thermal-imaging security on its roof to safeguard its plumbing and ductwork. Though I will admit, once that idea came to me, I realized how many thousands - if not millions - of dollars worth of fish and other marine life depended on the seawater filtration system.

The Aquarium may have been closed, but it wasn't empty.

Any number of the fish and other creatures are nocturnal, so just like our trip to the zoo two weeks ago, there were probably some staff. Plus, the whole place is made out of glass. Sort of. Imagine how many hundreds and hundreds of visitors the Aquarium gets, how many fingers touching glass. I'm sure it needs to be cleaned top to bottom every day, so I'm sure custodians have a long shift.

I should have realized how we were going to get into the Aquarium, but I didn't. I guess knowing that Cassie had acquired the albatross handler, I just assumed Cassie was going to get us in. But when you consider that Cassie was wearing a mint green one-piece and had no goddamned keys, you realize how stupid such a thought actually is. And of course we had a morph that was great at getting around in ducts.

I never in my life thought I'd have to morph that flying squirrel again. But that's what we had to do.

Marco had figured out, much to Jake's relief, that we would not have to blow the transformer to the building. Actually, since the only animal we actually needed to acquire was the Laysan albatross, a bird that was technically off-exhibit, we didn't need to worry about cameras so much. It turned out the Aquarium itself turned off nearly all of its live streams after closing, and we weren't going near any of the exhibits that had night streams. So, worst case scenario, we might have to destroy one camera, and the Aquarium would pick up security footage of small rodents running around.

That was the Catch-22, though. Because Makana was what they call an "animal ambassador" rather than an exhibit, we had no idea where in the hell they kept the bird.

That was a problem for when we actually got inside, though. Some of Jake's very best profanity failed to open the grate to the duct. But, there are some problems only Marco can figure out. Yes, this is because Marco is very smart. Because while I'm sure Marco could have figured out how to get that vent open, he also knew that a six hundred pound gorilla could do it better than anyone.

His giant black hand grabbed the vent cover and he tore it off like it was aluminum foil. Marco was all about expediency by this stage in our plan. The quicker we got this bird, the quicker we got to fly home. Literally. Morphing the albatross was going to be significantly faster flying home. If all went to plan, if we found Makana in less than an hour, we would be home before three. I might get a whole five to six hours of sleep.

Ugh. The glamorous life of an Animorph.

The scurry down the vent went well, but the last time we had morphed the squirrel, we were running in full panic mode up a similar vent while a giant monster made of tentacles - the monster that killed Elfangor - tried to rip the vent out of the ceiling.

If I had known this is how we were getting in, I would have landed on the roof of a different exhibit.

Most of the lights were out in the Aquarium, but a flying squirrel's night vision is incredible. They can see by starlight, so the lights of the individual tanks were more than enough for us to navigate. We knew the albatross was off-exhibit, so the first thing we did was to find the staff doors.

That part was easy enough.

Once in the employees-only area, though, we had no idea where to go.

Actually, what saved us was that one of the people that apparently work at the Aquarium at night had left a radio on somewhere. I'm not sure if Jake intended to follow the sound just to assess how many people were in the Aquarium at night, or if he followed the sounds of Latin pop music subconsciously.

All I know is eventually, we passed two Hispanic custodial workers mopping up in the staff corridor and managed to find a sign indicating that we were on the right track to find the albatross housing.

They kept Makana in something like a kiddie pool combined with the type of mesh enclosure you might see surrounding a trampoline. Hanging from the ceiling was a rope toy that she could play with if she wanted. We looked all around the room looking for any cameras, but we didn't see anything. There was no way even all five of us squirrels could close the heavy door. I was worried that it was open. Did they always leave it open? Or did that mean Makana's handler was here?

We had that debate amongst ourselves for a few minutes before Tobias said he'd just stand watch above the door outside. Flying squirrels can cling to painted cinder block very easily, and it's not like he wouldn't see anyone coming well in advance.

All in all, it couldn't really have gone better. Elfangor had explained to Jake - at the eleventh hour, of course - that the Escafil device is a little fuzzy about morphing members of the same species. For example, Jake could be Chapman all day if he wanted, and the two-hour limit wouldn't really be broken because of the minimal divergence in the human genome. So it was that Cassie was able to demorph straight from the flying squirrel to Makana's handler. Her swimsuit didn't fit quite as well on this body, but the important thing is that she wasn't naked. Cassie grabbed a towel off a wall hook and made a makeshift sarong, and shut the door most of the way. She couldn't shut it all the way because of Tobias, and of course our safety net depended on our own ability to morph back to squirrel and run right the hell back out.

I thought that Makana was asleep when we finished demorphing and could see over the edge of her kiddie pool. The way the white and grey bird was floating, maybe she was, but she recognized her handler. She made a happy squawking sound.

Cassie motioned for all of us to hurry up and demorph. Cassie went first in acquiring the bird, obviously, and I happened to be next. As soon as I was done, I morphed back to squirrel so that I could take Tobias's post as lookout.

It should only take them another five minutes to acquire the albatross and scurry back out the door. Five minutes and we'd be on our way out of the Aquarium, and on the wing across the Monterey Bay.

But four minutes later, I saw shadows down the hallway.

‹Guys,› I said with emphasis. ‹Squirrel. Now. Someone's coming.›

I relaxed somewhat when I saw the custodial crew. At first, I'd thought it was going to be Makana's real handler and that we were going to have a problem. I was half right.

It turns out that the custodial crew for the Aquarium really hate rodents.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

* * *

‹It's just the cleaning crew,› I said. Yeah, just the cleaning crew. Five minutes later, I'd have a different opinion. ‹Hurry up.›

‹Tobias is acquiring the bird now,› Marco said. ‹We'll all be squirrel in a few minutes.›

The cleaning crew had a radio on their cart, and I heard them decently in advance. I sat stark still on the wall. One of them had a bucket and a mop, half dancing as he cleaned the floor, and the other had the cart, something like you'd see at a hotel, really. Most of it was two large trash bins on wheels, but there were slots for spray bottles, shammy cloths, dustpan, that kind of stuff.

All in all, for a job that likely only paid minimum wage, they seemed like they were making the best of it. I caught snippets of conversation in Spanish. I was only in my second year of Spanish myself, and they were talking too fast for me to really pick out much. But considering they didn't seem to have to deal with any supervisor looking over their shoulders and basically got a free pass to the Aquarium after hours, it probably wasn't a terrible gig. I could be wrong, of course. For all I knew, their job could have sucked more than anything in the history of sucking. But it looked like they were having fun with it.

Then they saw the door below me was open, which is apparently out of the ordinary. And once the door caught their attention, it took only seconds for them to see me.

" Oh, mierda," one of the workers said. " Un ratón!"

I knew enough Spanish to translate: Oh, shit, a mouse!

‹Crap, they saw me.›

Two things are very important to note here. The first is that flying squirrels have unimaginably fast reflexes. I was a bear at the time, and I had my paws full dealing with several monstrous reptilian Hork-Bajir, but I had caught glimpses of Cassie, Jake, and Tobias playing a fucked up version of Keep Away or Tag amidst a group of armed Controllers. We learned very quickly that disintegrator rays aren't great at close quarters, and they did a lot more damage to themselves trying to hit three fast-moving targets than they had the squirrels. So the humans coming at me looked like they were in slow motion. I had remarkable clarity of thought.

At least, I did in my human mind.

The second thing is that flying squirrels have the most powerful panic response of anything I'd morphed so far. Maybe Jake's lizard morph came close, I don't know. What I do know is that before I could consciously decide to say anything to the others, my squirrel body - all on its own - decided it was time to fucking leave.

If you don't keep a tight mental lid on them, the morph's natural instincts are really hard to control. Keeping the owl from looking for food, or keeping the ray from looking for shellfish, that stuff is rather easy. Or easier, anyway. Owls and rays are predatory, and while the ray is aware that it has its own predators, that's not a huge concern for it. With the squirrel… Even if I had been more attentive to the animal instincts, I don't think there's much I could do to keep the little body from running.

I was ten feet down the wall before I even had enough control to steer of my own volition. I wasn't able to stop though. I managed to turn around before I took off down the corridor, and found myself running straight at the custodians.

Yes, I know that sounds like a dumb decision. But I was trying to stay close to the door to the albatross room so we didn't get separated. Staying close wasn't really an option, though. I didn't want to get separated from my friends, but I had to lose the cleaning crew. Find a vent, I thought. They're not going to to tear the place up if a mouse gets in the wall. They might set traps or something, but they wouldn't keep looking.

I dodged a shoe, realizing they were trying to kill me. These guys apparently didn't mess around when it came to rodents. The boot was easy. I just turned vertically up the wall. I was five feet from an air conditioning vent. But they swung a mop at the wall and water trickled down the surface. My tiny little paws, even with my sharp climbing claws, slipped on the wet surface. I slid down the wall, and that was enough for one of them to grab me in large hands that smelled of cleaning solution.

I heard voices through the cage of fingers that held me, shafts of light through the gaps that taunted me with visions of a hallway I couldn't reach. But all I could really hear was my own heartbeat. And also I was making a terrible squeaking sound, I realized. My tiny squirrel heart felt like it was going to explode.

Flying squirrels are powered by fear and anxiety.

But teenage girls are powered by rage and tenacity, and I hate being grabbed or held. I have a complex about it, I really do. So without even thinking about it, I bit the hell out of a finger. I think most people, when they think squirrel, imagine something in a backyard eating acorns or climbing hilariously into a bird-feeder. Those kind of squirrels are a bit different from flying squirrels. See, flying squirrels are omnivorous. They catch bugs, frogs, lizards, small mice, and so on. They don't just eat nuts, though they do that, too. Oh, and it's worth mentioning here that anything that can bite through a freaking walnut can bite through your thumbnail like you'd bite through the crust on a sandwich.

Which the custodian found out the hard way.

I tasted blood - a lot of blood - as the sharp teeth of my lower jaw pierced deep into his thumb, and my top teeth did indeed go right through his thumbnail. Needless to say, he threw me to the wall just as hard as he could. Part of it was anger, I'm sure, but mostly I think just the shock of pain caused him to fling his hand to get me off of him. I stretched out my patagium - the technical term for the stretchy fur-cloak membrane of skin flying squirrels use to glide - and I was able to brake just enough momentum that I didn't smash into the wall.

The bleeding janitor screamed a string of Spanish obscenities and I took off running. Fortunately, the other guy was way more interested in his bleeding coworker than he was in me. At least until he caught me scurrying past his foot. I heard him curse at me as I pushed the little body into turbo mode. I dodged his hands as he groped for me on the floor. He tried to turn to catch me, but he overbalanced and fell over. It might have been funny if I wasn't so scared.

I again climbed the wall and this time I made it to the air conditioning vent. I was big enough that it was difficult to squeeze into the narrow space. The custodians thought I was a mouse, but actually size-wise, I was somewhere between a mouse and a rat. But an interesting fact about rodents is that their ribcage is designed to fold. If they can get their head through a gap, all of them can follow, which is an amazing evolutionary advantage if you think about it. Well, I guess if you have a thing about mice and rats, that's probably terrifying. But I knew I could fit, I just needed a minute. I felt fingers brush my tail as I finally squeezed through.

I heard more swearing in Spanish below me but the important thing was that I was safe. For the moment. Flying squirrels can see well in the dark, but what that really means is they can see in light levels too dark for human eyes. In total darkness, dark is dark. The only source of light at all is what filtered in from the vent slats, and that didn't give me much. The first bend in the duct, and all the light vanished.

But I didn't care about dark. I was just fine being out of arm's reach of the custodians. I had fought Taxxons and Hork-Bajir, survived bullets and Dracon beams, and here I was cowering in a duct, at the mercy of a pair of custodians.

‹Jake? Anybody? Can you guys hear me?› One of the many things Elfangor had withheld to the last possible second was that thought-speech is only heard by those you want to hear it. If I didn't want the custodians to hear me, they wouldn't.

‹I'm here! What the hell is going on out there?› Jake asked. His voice sounded a little dull, fuzzy. Thought-speech is different from auditory communication in some ways and similar in others. One of the ways it was similar is the way distance and obstruction interfere. Think of thought-speech in terms of brain wave radio. I wasn't sure how far down the hallway I'd ended up, or even which way they were from here. For all I knew, this wasn't the same vent as last time. I'd lost my bearings when I was picked up and thrown to the wall.

‹The cleaning crew thought I was a mouse,› I panted, trying to calm down. ‹I'm in an AC duct right now.›

I waited an excruciatingly long moment, waiting for Jake to say something. I could hear some kind of fumbling noises for a minute or two, then came an odd sound. Metallic, rhythmic… the sound of screws being turned. The custodian I hadn't bitten was taking off the vent cover. Son of a bitch, these assholes hate mice. I watched as he set two mouse traps in the inside of the duct. Ha, big deal. Like I couldn't pass two traps. Then he set down a glue trap right in front of the vent. Shit.

‹We need to get out of here,› Jake said casually, as though I hadn't long-since come to that conclusion.

‹Gee, you think?› I spat. ‹I can't get out the way I got in.›

Another beat of silence. ‹Can you get out another way?› he asked. ‹I mean, does that duct go anywhere?›

I grumbled to myself. ‹How should I know?›

‹If it's an AC vent, you should be able to follow it to the roof unit,› Marco said. ‹Just feel the air flow and walk against the wind. We'll meet you on the roof.›

I swore to myself and looked at the black all around me. Navigating that kind of dark didn't appeal not me, neither my human brain nor the squirrel instincts. But this was the task at hand and I didn't have many other options.

‹Peachy,› I quipped.

I was basically blind in the duct, and that was off-putting, both to my human mind and the squirrel instincts. I wasn't the kind of rodent that typically spent a lot of time in tunnels. But the squirrel definitely had a better handle on it than I did. My little whiskers helped me keep track of the side of the duct. I had no sense of time or distance in the dark, and so I counted the gaps to other vents. It wasn't lost on me that I could have gotten out of the duct through one of the other vent covers, but that left me with two issues. First, I would be just as lost as I was now, except more visible to the mouse-hating custodians. And second, I knew the others were headed to the roof as well. Heading back to the albatross room would have been futile.

After the eighth - or was it the ninth? - vent, I still hadn't found a way up and I was getting nervous. You can get a lot done in two hours, and I had reset my morph clock just minutes before the mess with the janitors, but knowing I had to get out before I could demorph, I started freaking out a little.

I hate to admit it, but I do have some issues with claustrophobia. Just thinking about diving into the crushing black abyss had been enough to freak me out in the library. I know the whale would have all the requisite anatomy to reach our target depth, to hold its breath, all that. But just the thought of holding my breath for ninety minutes made my heart race.

‹Jake? Anyone?› I called out. I didn't get an answer, but I wasn't really expecting one. I was apparently far enough away already - or there were too many concrete walls between us - for me to hear the others. I was alone in the dark, in the silence. The only sound was the slight reverberation of my own paws on the metal surface of the duct. Black as far as the eye could see, even with eyes as sensitive as these.

The wind from the industrial air conditioning unit had escalated from a light breeze to something more like a decent wind. I knew I was getting closer to the main unit. Keep moving, I told myself. Keep moving and you'll be out of here before you know it.

I was plenty motivated to get out, believe me, but I had to keep that inner dialogue. Partly to keep the claustrophobia from invading all my conscious thoughts and mixing with the squirrel's own fear response. But also because getting anywhere at squirrel size is basically like hiking. I felt like I'd been walking for miles even though I knew I'd probably not even gone a hundred yards. The tiny little body has a hell of a metabolism, and while that translates into really quick motions, it also means the body tires easily. That's why the squirrel brain thinks about nothing but food and predators.

God, I thought, I could really go for a bacon cheeseburger. When we were doing missions with Elfangor, Jake had delved into a lot of junk food. Chili dogs at the Boardwalk, ice cream at the zoo. Don't get me wrong, we're teenagers and I'm not the kind of girl that's on a constant diet to maintain a target weight. Between the miles I put on the treadmill during lacrosse training and just having a good metabolism, I was lucky enough to not have to worry about stuff like that much. But it'd definitely seemed to me at the time like Jake had been making a thing out if it. I thought maybe it was a stress response. Comfort food. Now I wondered if it wasn't just a reaction to morphing that we were all doing.

Oddly enough, that little mental diversion helped me calm the squirrel body.

Another three vent intersections later, I finally found a vertical section to the duct. I could hear the whirring motor of the main unit. The vertical part wasn't the same as the horizontal sections. To this point, I'd been on what I assumed to be sheet aluminum. The vertical section was more like a hose made out of that weird plastic foil stuff they use to make emergency blankets. And it was insulated with fiberglass insulation. I found this out because my sharp climbing claws punctured the foil pretty damn easily.

Getting to the main unit didn't take that long, but the air flow was up to a full gale by the time I found an elbow joint that brought me horizontal again. As small as I was, it was all I could do to climb into the aluminum tube. I didn't get another ten feet before I gave up trying to move. This was as close to the main unit as I could get.

And there were no vents to get out.

‹Can you guys still hear me?› I asked, but there was still no answer.

God damn it. I needed them to answer. I either needed help to get out, or I was going to have to backtrack in the duct and come out another vent.

Gathering as much focus as I could muster, I called out in thought-speech again. I was hoping they were close.

‹...chel… are you?› I heard vaguely. I couldn't even tell who answered. Could have been any of them. The voice sounded like it was underwater.

‹I'm here!› I shouted, a feeling of elation flooding through me. ‹Guys! I'm here, I'm here!›

‹That's more like it,› Tobias said. Oh, thank heaven. ‹Where are you?›

‹I have no idea,› I sighed. ‹I'm in an AC duct, it's a horizontal aluminum tube. Beyond that, I got nothing.›

‹Alright, hang tight, we'll find you.›

This is one of the ways thought-speech is different from talking. There's no directionality to thought-speech, so playing Marco Polo just wouldn't work. What they did instead - and I found out they were back in owl morph for this - was to go to every horizontal aluminum tube on every building and peck at it. Eventually, they would find me.

It took about fifteen minutes, maybe more, before I heard tapping on my duct. ‹Yes! That's me!› I said. The reason it took so long is because I was on the wrong roof. We had gone through a lot of corridors and turns from the time we dropped into the Tentacles building so it shouldn't have been surprising that we'd changed buildings at some point before finding that stupid albatross. But it meant the roof I had come out was not the roof they'd come out.

Jake may have wanted to avoid property damage, but if he had a problem with Marco ripping the duct out of the elbow joint, he kept it to himself. To be fair, once I was out of the duct, Marco did try to put the tube back into the elbow joint, but it was obvious the Aquarium would need to call an HVAC service in the morning.

I demorphed with the others. They came out of their owl morphs, I came out of squirrel, and Marco out of gorilla.

The second I was fully human, I felt an involuntary shudder course through my whole body. "Ugh, that was so the opposite of fun," I said.

"They guy you bit probably needs stitches," Cassie said. If she expected me to be sympathetic, she was talking to the wrong girl.

"He seemed to have a lot of terrible things to say," Tobias said. "I didn't get nearly any of it, though."

Marco laughed. "That's too bad, T. I haven't heard that much profanity since that time we helped my dad reshingle the roof at our old place."

Jake shook his head. "Oh, god, I remember that."

"Wait, what happened?" Cassie asked.

Marco shook his head. "My dad shot himself in the thigh with the nail gun."

"Yeah," I said. "I can see why that it'd bring out the cussing."

"It wasn't his dad," Jake said.

I looked at Marco. He nodded. "Oh, you should have seen my mom tear into him. Told him if he ever did something that stupid again, she'd nail both his feet to the floor. In the most colorful language you can imagine."

I hadn't heard Marco talk much about his family in a long time, and it made me feel weird. If I hadn't been so exhausted, I might have been more emotional. But as it was, I could barely stand, and I knew we still had to fly home. "We need to get out of here," I said.

Marco's wistful smile slowly vanished as he nodded. "Yeah, we all need to get home and get some sleep."

Morphing the albatross wasn't much different from morphing the raven or the owl, but it was a little different. Having webbed feet rather than talons, that was weird. And the way my nostrils migrated on my beak, that was a sensation I could have done without. But while the Laysan albatross was small for an albatross, this was still the largest bird any of us had morphed. I found myself instinctively testing my six-foot wingspan, feeling the breeze.

And without even meaning to, I took off. The others were right behind me. The albatross more than anything else wanted to be in the air. It only took a few flaps of my wings to catch the wind. The bones in my wings locked into place, and I was just a kite at that point. I could turn and steer, but basically I was sailing more than I was flying, if that makes sense. We flew higher, cutting into the wind, rocking side to side, navigating the breeze effortlessly. That's not hyperbole, either. Flying as an albatross took no more effort than watching TV. I don't know how I knew where I was going, I just did. It's like the albatross had some kind of built-in GPS or something, I just instinctively knew where I was and which way home was. I found out later that birds can perceive Earth's magnetic field. But I didn't care in the moment, I was just happy to be heading home.

‹Man, if the way home is anything like this, this won't be so terrible,› Cassie said.

I couldn't disagree. We were just floating there above the waters of the Bay, below the moon and stars. I mean, no wonder sailors wrote poems about these birds. Being an albatross is like being the wind itself.

‹Shit,› Marco said suddenly.

‹Way to kill the moment,› I sighed.

‹No, I just had an idea. Wish I had it earlier.›

‹What's the idea?› Jake asked.

‹That one of us should have morphed the albatross before we left and one of us could have tried acquiring the bird that way,› he said.

Son of bitch, why did that not occur to any of us.

‹I have my doubts that'll work,› Tobias said. ‹I think Elfangor would have mentioned it.›

‹Bullshit,› Marco said. ‹He waited till we were tailing Chapman to the pool to tell us it was probably underground. He didn't tell Jake the exceptions to human morphs till he got to the pool. He didn't tell us about private thought-speak till we ran into Visser Three. It seems like the kind of shit we should test.›

‹Agreed,› Jake said. ‹Easy enough to check, Marco. I'll just see if I can't acquire your gorilla morph.›

‹Aw, man, not Kong. I'm kinda possessive about that one.›

I laughed, but I knew what he meant. I wouldn't want anyone else morphing grizzly, though I can't really put into words why i felt that way. It just seemed personal or something. Like that was my grizzly. Still, if Aximili could acquire the albatross that way, all the better. There was no way he'd be able to touch the sperm whale without drowning, obviously, but hopefully, the squid idea worked.

Speaking of the whale…

‹We need to put the rest of this plan in gear,› I said. ‹Need to set up our camping trip alibi, go whale watching, and we need those wetsuits.›

‹Don't forget the GPS for the cargo ship,› Marco added.

‹I already ordered it,› Jake said. ‹It'll be here in the next few days. But Rachel's right. Tomorrow, I'm going to check my schedule, see if I can move some of my shifts for next week. Craig owes me some favors, and it's not like he'd hate the extra hours.›

‹I have to convince Melissa to sit for my sisters for who knows how many days, so that'll go over well with my parents,› I said.

We talked like that for awhile, mostly just killing time as our wings swallowed mile after mile of ocean below. Tobias and I confirmed a time to meet Marco at the beach for swim lessons. Jake said he'd drop me and my sisters off at the beach and then probably spend the day helping Cassie with her chores before he went to work. Stuff like that.

Eventually, in what seemed to be no time at all, the city of Santa Cruz appeared on the horizon. The lights of the Boardwalk appeared first, then slowly the rest of the city came into focus. We flew over the Wharf again, and I saw the sea lions below. Somewhere down there was the lion that had tried to eat Cassie. Sea lions are smart and they have a really good memory, so it wouldn't surprise me if that particular lion never tried to eat another stingray in its life.

We said our goodbyes then. Each of us split off in our own direction, all headed to our own places. Soon I would be home, where I'd crawl back into bed and surrender to the oblivion that waited for me. By the time I flew into my bedroom window and demorphed, I needed sleep like I needed air. I stripped out of my morphing clothes and threw on a nightshirt. My sheets felt cool and inviting, and I was out in seconds.

But I knew tomorrow was going to be a busy day.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

* * *

If Sara had woken me up any earlier, I'm sure I could have caught the rest of the Big Bang out my bedroom window. Alright, so it wasn't Dawn of Creation early, but when you've gotten only a few hours sleep, waking up at all feels like being pulled back from the dead. Sunlight cascaded through my window. I'd remembered to close it, but not to close the blinds. Stupid.

I shielded my eyes from the light with my hand, and for just a second or two, I let myself enjoy the respite. But Sara wouldn't stop shaking my shoulder.

"Unnh," I groaned. "What do you want, little girl?"

"I want you to wake up," she said, flatly.

Reluctantly, I sat up. I grabbed my little sister and pulled her into a fierce hug amd tousled her hair. I was fortunate enough that I hadn't had any nightmares. That was the positive. The negative was that I woke up thinking I'd only been asleep a whole fifteen minutes, and I knew I was going to have to just suck it up and try to get through the day. "I'm getting up. I just need to get dressed. Now get out of here before I turn into a bear and eat you."

Sara ran out of the room, presumably either to find a PopTart or in some way bother Jordan. Ugh, why couldn't I just lock each of them in their room with some food and water? Couldn't I take a state prison philosophy to baby-sitting?

I pulled my blinds and shut the door so I could get changed. It was going to be a beach day, so I opted to put on my bikini under my clothes. When I was dressed, I grabbed my roll of cash out of my drawer, put the money in my purse, and pulled my phone off the charger.

Not surprisingly, I had no new texts from the others. Nine in the morning during summer break, Cassie was the only other that would be awake. But I did have new texts from Melissa. She wanted to hang out later, seemingly taking me up on my earlier request for a sleepover. That worked out; I needed to talk to her about taking my sisters, anyway. Ugh, that meant having a conversation with my parents. It's not like my dissatisfaction with the nanny job had sprung up overnight, but it was a topic I had avoided talking about for a long time. But thinking about it now, as worn out as I was from the night before, I can't even begin to express how little I cared what my parents said. I'm their sister, not their mother.

Just like that, I'd decided I was coming home with job applications. I mean, I already knew I wasn't going to get a job. Probably. Melissa hadn't found one yet, but Jake had mentioned they weren't completely set with summer hires yet. Two of the new guys they'd hired weren't working out, apparently. I half-wondered how Mom could shoot me down for getting a summer job. The sad thing was, I knew that's just the position she'd end up taking. She needed me home.

I was already in a mood even before I had coffee.

It took me about half an hour to get everything ready for the beach. My sisters were fine with that plan, and Sara helped me make sandwiches while Jordan loaded the cooler with ice, drinks, and the bag of apples. We changed into our swimsuits, put fresh towels in the beach bag, and finally I called Jake.

Apparently I'd woken him out of a dead sleep, and I tried to feel guilty, but really I just resented that he'd gotten an extra hour of sleep. Plus, it meant my sisters and I had to sit and wait for a ride, so we left the cooler and the bags by the door and I turned on an episode of My Little Pony to keep my sisters busy.

I used the delay to message Melissa on Facebook. "Mind watching the girls for a few days?"

"Few days?" she messaged back, along with a raised eyebrow emoji.

"Jake and Marco have this idea to go camping, and Cassie wants to go, but she needs another girl to go or her dad won't let her go." That was only half true, and I'm sure there was going to be some other lies involved for Cassie to duck out for a few days, but the bit about Cassie not being allowed out without another girl on the trip was definitely true enough.

"I can ask," she texted back. "When is this camping trip, anyway?"

"Jake is ironing out his work schedule, should be soon," I typed. Then, on a whim, I added, "I'll give you $100 on top of the daily rate."

"Really?"

I sighed inwardly, but we were already planning on robbing carjackers, so what the hell, right? "Yeah, three to five days, $160 - 200."

There was a long pause where she didn't answer. Finally a text appeared. "Five days might be pushing it, but I'll ask."

No sooner had I read that text than I heard the horn of Jake's SUV. My sisters ran out and buckled in. Jake and I loaded the trunk. "I texted Melissa," I said casually. I felt weird for some reason. Maybe it was just the rising trepidation that I was going to have an argument with my parents. Maybe it was nerves that once we set out for our "camping trip," we'd be set in the endgame of this plan.

And we'd be bringing a stranded alien back with us.

I don't think any of us had really discussed what we were going to do with Aximili once we got him to terra firma. Elfangor's camp in the woods had been very ad hoc, and ultimately, it had been very temporary as well. I wondered again what life would have been like if Elfangor had come out with us. Things would have been so much different if he'd been there. But he wasn't. And I had no idea what we were going to do with Aximili once we had him.

"What did she say?" he asked.

"She's asking her parents. Do we know when we're going to be doing this?"

Jake shrugged. "According to Amazon, the GPS tracker I ordered gets here tomorrow. I'm going in early to talk to my manager and trade shifts. I'll have a better answer for you tomorrow."

We shut the trunk and headed out. Jake would swing back through before he started his shift so that me or Marco could drop him off. But he wanted to spend some time with his girlfriend before he had to shill popcorn, and I thought it was oddly cute that he'd spend a few hours mucking stalls if it got him just a little bit of private time with Cassie. Her dad was the overly-protective type, so I shook my head thinking what would happen when he found out his daughter had a boyfriend.

It probably wouldn't be a good day for Jake.

Or Cassie, for that matter.

But I had no thoughts whatsoever about dating, so it didn't faze me in the least. I'd never really had too much interest in boys in general, and boyfriends seemed like more trouble than they were worth. All cards on the table, I think my mom suspected I was a lesbian. She didn't come out and ask, and maybe part of me wasn't sure she was wrong. I mean, Melissa and I often joked that were going to end up being common-law wives, so it's not like the idea never crossed my mind. But being a little bi-curious notwithstanding, that wasn't the real reason I'd avoided dating.

That was something I didn't talk about. Not with Cassie, and not with Melissa.

Jake helped me get our stuff out of the trunk and then he was gone. I wanted to be made at him for not helping me carry the cooler, but it did have wheels and we were on the sidewalk, so it's not like I couldn't manage. We were meeting Marco at the surf and dive shop where his mom used to work, and Jake had dropped us off as close as it was possible to get without walking through sand. Actually, we were just a stone's throw from the Wharf from here.

Cabrera's is a great little shop on the beach. It has surf and dive rentals, but also rents out personal watercraft, you can sign up for parasailing, and that doesn't even get to the shop itself. It sells anything you need at the beach. Wetsuits, swimsuits, goggles, flippers, beach towels, sunglasses, sunblock, you name it. And on top of all that they offer surf lessons and scuba certification courses. So it's little wonder that the place always draws a crowd.

We found a spot in the sand some distance from the shop, somewhere where he should be able to see Marco or Tobias when they arrived, but wouldn't have to deal with the hustle and flow of the shop patrons.

I got my sisters slathered in sunscreen and till Marco and Tobias showed up, there wasn't much to do but swim and play in the sand. So we just enjoyed the beach. I actually needed the break from mission planning and alien drama. Just a girl having fun at the beach with her sisters. Sara liked playing in the shallows, Jordan had put on her goggles and was collecting shells. She liked to make shell jewelry. We were just being kids, really. I mean, obviously a lot of my personal priorities revolved around planning our rescue mission, but it's not like I wasn't spending quality time with my sisters. This was our third visit to the beach since school had let out. We'd been to the Boardwalk, the Aquarium, the library, and we'd gone to the movies.

And each little thing I did with my sisters, it made it feel like the alien stuff was worth it, if that makes sense. I knew what we were doing was dangerous. I knew there were risks involved. But I knew what Elfangor must have felt when he realized that Aximili had crashed at sea. Aximili was nothing but question marks at present, and I knew we were going to have to talk about that in the near future, but for as much of a pain in the ass as he'd been to this point, he was still Elfangor's brother. I knew how much I loved my sisters, and how far I'd go to protect them. I knew what it was like to be the eldest sibling and the responsibilities that came with it.

So those little moments with Jordan and Sara, they both helped me decompress from the alien drama, but simultaneously reaffirmed my resolve to do it. That's how messed up my life had become.

Marco and Tobias didn't make it to the beach till more than an hour after Jake had dropped us off. They arrived together, and apparently they'd taken the bus, which I suppose I should have expected. Come to think of it, I didn't know if either Marco or Tobias had a license or not. I did, and obviously Jake did, but since he had the only vehicle between the five of us, I suppose it didn't matter.

"What the hell kept you guys?" I asked. I'd taken a little break from the water, and I was lying on one of the towels, drinking an iced tea from the cooler when Marco set down his duffel bag, the same one from the other day.

"I slept in," Tobias said. He wasn't apologetic about it, and while I glared at the very idea that anyone got more sleep than I did, I couldn't be mad at him. If not for my sisters, I'd probably have slept another day and a half.

"I had to go to the library," Marco said.

I narrowed my eyes, wondering if he had more oceanographic maps or another book on whales in his duffel. "Why the library?"

He looked around, making sure we weren't going to be overheard. "I wanted to get some more information on that vehicle shipping site."

I kinda chuckled at that. Anyone that would have heard him would just assume he was moving to Hawaii. Still, just knowing that the Yeerks existed made us all paranoid. "Are you so worried that you couldn't use your home computer for that?"

He shrugged then sighed. "I don't have internet at home right now."

My expression melted. "Wait, you don't have internet?"

He shrugged. "Glitch with the cable company."

I had a hard time imagining life without internet. Maybe I'm too much of a post-Millennial, but I don't even have phone numbers for half my friends. I did a lot of texting through Facebook and Twitter. And I'm not really a TV girl, but I do have shows I watch.

My reaction must have showed, because Tobias cleared his throat. It was enough for me to bring myself back to the present. "Did you find out anything interesting?" Tobias asked.

"Yeah," Marco nodded. "It's apparently a five-day trip from LA to Hawaii, and the site said delivery from California takes six to seven days."

"So that means they send out a ship every two or three days, right" Tobias asked.

Marco shrugged. "Not a hundred percent on that, but yeah, I'm assuming they need to have near-constant shipments. And actually I think that seven-day shipping is just for their pick-up locations. Like if you want someone to drive out to Redding and tow your car back to Oakland, I think it just adds a day to the shipping."

"So what that means for us," I said, "is no matter what day we go to LA, they're going to be shipping the next day."

Marco nodded. "Or the day after that at the latest. Well, enough talking. We're here to swim. Let's go find your sisters."

I blinked at that. I hadn't really considered my sisters joining our swim lesson, but it's not like I could leave them unattended on the beach. As it was, I had to keep track of them from the towel as they played in the surf and shallows. "Is Sara old enough for this?" I asked.

"I got my scuba cert when I was Jordan's age," he said with a shrug. "I don't know. Can she swim at all?"

"She can doggy paddle," I said, "but she doesn't really go in water where she can't touch the bottom. Not without a float, anyway."

Marco frowned at this. "Jordan can swim, though, right?"

I nodded.

"Alright, let's go rent a life jacket for the little one."

I called in Jordan and Sara and we went up to the rental window on the side of Cabrera's. There was a bit of a line, but it went by quickly. The guy at the counter looked like an odd character. Somewhere between an old-school surfer and a homeless hippie guru. He was a big guy in his fifties, it seemed, with hair that was more salt than pepper tied in a man bun. He had the air of a retired linebacker. His complexion was sun-kissed, and that made his ethnicity ambiguous. His face was heavily lined, not with age, but rather with life. The type of lines you get from laughing too often, from being out in the sun every day. He had tattoos on his arms that were black once upon a time, but were now faded to more of a dull blue. They looked tribal, but I couldn't tell you want they were.

"Hey, Frank," Marco said. "Been awhile."

The old man smiled like he'd never had a better day than to see Marco. "Uhang! Is that you, amigo?"

"Did he just call you Wang?" Tobias laughed.

Frank seemed to think that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. Like an old man with the sense of humor of an eighth-grader. "I will from now on, kid." He had an odd accent. Like a little bit of Spanish and something else. Maybe Japanese? Maybe Hawaiian? "No, uhang . It's a Chamorro word for shrimp. I've known Marco here since he was just a little popper."

"Chamorro?" I asked, hoping I wasn't being offensive.

"Native culture of the Mariana Islands," he said with a smile. "Not too many of us, chica."

"Oh," I said, not sure what to say to that.

"So what brings you back here?" he asked, his expression somehow less jovial.

"I need to rent a life jacket," he said casually.

Frank laughed. "You don't need to rent anything. What size do you need?"

And just like that, we had Sara in a neon pink life jacket that could probably be seen from the Ferris wheel at the Boardwalk if not by low-flying aircraft. "Why do I need a life jacket?" she asked. "Are we going on a boat ride?"

"No," Marco laughed, "We need to take Tobias and your sisters into deep water for some swimming lessons. We'll try to teach you, too, but if it's too hard, I need you to be able to float for a little while."

Sara seemed mostly puzzled by that statement. "That doesn't sound like much fun," she said.

"No, I guess it doesn't," Marco said. "But, tell you what, you can splash me the whole time, okay?"

Sara considered his offer a long moment. I don't know how little kids come to any of their decisions but she just shrugged, seemingly satisfied with Marco's proposal and waded out with us. About twenty feet from the surf, we were in water that was maybe seven or eight feet deep. Shallow enough that you could push off the bottom if you needed to, but deep enough for what we were doing.

"Alright," Marco started, adopting his best substitute teacher voice, "so the biggest difference to ocean swimming versus pool swimming is energy conservation. When you're in open water, you need to be able to tread water and spend as little energy as possible. The first thing we're going to do is called drown-proofing."

" What?! " I asked suddenly.

"Relax, relax. I know the name sounds intense, but it's not really that bad."

He was right. Drown-proofing - a technique that Marco said was taught to everyone from scouts to Navy SEALs - is really very simple. According to Marco, with fully-inflated lungs, most people have about three or four pounds of positive buoyancy. So really all drown-proofing entails is taking a deep breath, holding it, and just doing something like a deadman's float at the surface. There's a little more to it, of course, but the concept was very straightforward. Come up for air as needed, but spend no more energy than necessary.

Once I got used to the saltwater in my eyes, the worst part was the monotony. Marco had a waterproof diving watch, and he made us do this for ten minutes. Breathe, float. Breathe, float. Bobbing like a cork in the waves and current, listening to the sound of the water in my ears, the murky blue void, it was enough to drive a person to madness. I realized how last-ditch this tactic was. Like if the ship went down, this was how you were supposed to survive. Don't bother trying to swim to shore, you'd never make it. Breathe, float. Breathe, float. This was all about waiting for help. You'd either drift till you found something, someone would find you, or you'd fall asleep and drown. This was something you would never do unless you were completely out of other options.

From there, we went over the basics of treading water, which personally I thought he should have taught us first. He said the reason he did the drown-proofing first is that it supposedly takes no energy to do it. And it's what you do if you can't tread water, which seemed a very circular argument to me but I let it go. He taught us a type of wrist paddle that he said was called sculling, combined with flutter kicks, which were really just small scissor kicks. It didn't even take half an hour, and Marco actually took Sara out of her life jacket so she could learn too. My seven-year-old little sister wasn't drown-proofed, but she knew how to tread water.

"So why are we learning how to swim, anyway?" Jordan asked.

I almost gulped a mouthful of seawater, but thankfully, Tobias is very quick sometimes. "Rachel and I were thinking of taking surf lessons this summer. Marco said we needed to know how to do this before we even got on a board."

"Hey, Toby," Sara said. Man, I just couldn't see him as a Toby. "Can we play in the sand again?"

Tobias smiled. "Yeah, sounds fun."

That was the end of swim lessons. I was surprised how easy it was, but then again, I did know how to swim already. We swam back to shore and Marco took the life jacket back to Frank while the rest of us went straight to the cooler for a sandwich and a drink.

I reapplied sunblock to my sisters and made sure Tobias put some on before Jordan and Sara dragged him off to make another sand sculpture. I was done swimming for the day, so I just relaxed on my towel and enjoyed the sunshine while Marco ate his sandwich.

"You asleep?" he asked, apparently grabbing a drink from the cooler.

I sighed. "No. Just chilling. If I do nod off, make sure my sisters don't drown or get kidnapped."

"Or murder Tobias."

"Yeah, keep T alive for me, okay?"

"I was going to ask if you wanted to go look at wetsuits with me while Tobias has the girls."

I frowned at that. I did have the cash on me, and this was the whole reason I'd brought the sum of my savings with me to the beach. But… If I spent this cash now, I knew the only way to replace it was to go ahead with Tobias's plan to rob his uncle's crew. I realized I was biting my lip, and quickly shook myself to regain composure. I don't know why, I just didn't want to look nervous. "Yeah, let's see what they have in stock."

The inside of Cabrera's wasn't as crowded as it was outside. I suppose once you bought a wetsuit and such, you didn't have as much need to come back into the store as you did to hit up the rental counter. There were a few surfboards on the wall as display models. You could order custom boards from the website and pick them up in-store, so there was a little kiosk desk where you could place orders or browse graphics. The front of the store had duffel bags, surfboard fins, all manner of accessories, dive watches, bikinis and one-pieces, and the ubiquitous t-shirts.

But pretty much the rest of the interior space was all wetsuits. They carried mens', women's, and children's styles in a number of different colors and styles. BodyGlove, EVO, Rip Curl, Billabong, Cressi. And prices varied considerably by brand and style, from under thirty dollars to more than ninety. Technically, given how cold the waters of the Monterey Bay could get, we would probably do best in full-coverage wetsuits. But those cost more money, and I wasn't sure they'd be the most practical for morphing. Or for that matter, for hiding under clothes. So we mostly looked at the shorty style suits.

I was looking at a grey and turquoise suit when I heard a voice. "That'd look so hot on you."

I turned around and saw some guy - couldn't be more than eighteen or nineteen but definitely older than me - give me one of the creepiest smiles I'd ever seen in my life. He wasn't bad looking, but he just had this really skeevy vibe. Every girl has that little warning when a guy just comes off… wrong. And this guy sure as hell wasn't right. But I was used to being hit on, so I just brushed it off. "I'm not sure I like this one," I said.

"You sure?" he said, trying that same over-confident smile again. "I think that color blue would really bring out your eyes."

I rolled my eyes and sighed. Marco seemed more amused than anything. He was doing everything in his power to not start laughing at this lame clown trying to pick me up. "Dude, you should back off," he said, trying to be civil.

"Is she your girlfriend?" the guy asked Marco.

Marco shook his head. "No. But she's not your girlfriend, either."

That seemed to amuse the guy. "Well, y'know, she could be my girlfriend." Then he turned to me and that creepy smile again. "If you wanted, that is."

Just like that, I felt a hand on my ass. I looked down, then back up at him. I stared him in the face, speechless and incredulous. I tried to say something, but I couldn't.

And then his fingers squeezed.

The moment crystallized right then. His fate was sealed, and all my indecision about what to do just evaporated immediately. I smiled back at him, feeling the heat in my ears. It wasn't a flirty smile. If he'd been better at reading girls, though, he wouldn't have put his hands on me. "Find something you like?" I asked as coyly as I could manage, glancing down at his hand.

He nodded. "Oh, yeah. Definitely something I like."

"Tough," I said.

And I broke his fingers.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

* * *

If you're quick enough, it really doesn't take much to break someone's finger. It's why it's taught for women's self-defense classes. I just reached down, grabbed his middle and ring fingers, and hyperextended them backwards as hard and as fast as I could. I think technically it's a dislocation, not a break, but either way, his fingers snapped loudly, and then I heard the guy scream.

"You crazy bitch!" he wailed, falling backwards and clutching his ruined hand.

I glared at him. "Don't ever touch a girl without asking, douchebag."

"I'm calling the cops!" he barked. His eyes burned with contempt.

"I already did." I turned around and saw Frank standing there, arms crossed, and he wasn't smiling. Actually, when he wasn't smiling, Frank was a more than a little intimidating. I looked around and realized there were a few other patrons that had seen what happened. Heat flooded my face. I wanted to scream or cry, but I wasn't sure which. God, I was so humiliated. But the advantage of living on a beach is that none of them seemed to have cell phones out. I wasn't going to end up as a post on someone's social media feed, at least.

"Dude," Marco said, his voice dripping with twisted bemusement. "You just groped the district attorney's underage daughter… in front of witnesses."

I was still incredibly pissed, but watching the color drain from that asswipe's face made me feel just a little better.

"I'd run if I were you," Marco continued. "To Mexico. Learn Spanish, change your name, burn off your fingerprints."

There are people on the track team that wouldn't have been able to run as fast as that guy did. He was out of the store in about a second flat.

Frank shook his head, then looked at me. "Are you okay?"

I nodded. "Did you really call the cops?" As much as I hated being groped by a stranger, it was such a humiliating process to have to tell the police that I'd been groped by a stranger. Not to mention I'd have to tell my sisters, and any formal complaint would at some point hit my mother's desk. That thought turned my stomach.

Frank shook his head. "No, but I can if you want me to."

I shook my head. "No, I'd rather not have my little sisters know what happened."

"Are you really the DA's kid?" he asked, smiling again. "Or was Marco just trying to fake him out?"

"No, he wasn't lying. My mom really is an ADA."

"Well, Marco's not-girlfriend, what brings you to my shop today?"

"Wetsuits," I said.

"I gotta go take care of these guys and I'll be right back to help you guys pick out some suits." Most of the other patrons followed Frank out to the other side of the shop.

"God, I can't believe that jerk." I turned around and saw a woman, maybe in her mid-twenties. She was the only other person in the shop. "You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay," I lied. "Thanks."

"But you should really wear a cover up indoors, honey."

" Excuse me? "

"I'm just saying," she went on, "that suit doesn't cover much. You know how boys can be."

I swear, I was about to kill her. I wasn't the only girl that day to come into the shop in a bikini. Mine wasn't even that provocative, really. And she was making it my fault. My fault.

"It's the fucking beach, lady," Marco said, unknowingly saving the woman from a savage beating. "You're a special kind of stupid, aren't you? It's people like you that make girls embarrassed to report this kind of shit."

The woman turned pink and went up to the counter to check out. She was buying a bikini, if you can believe that level of irony. The girl running the counter pointed to the sign on the wall. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone."

"Seriously?" she asked. "I want to see your manager."

"I'm the owner's daughter, lady. You owe the young woman an apology," she said. "Or you can take your business elsewhere."

I think the woman would have rather swallowed glass, but she turned to me and she did, in fact, apologize. The girl rang her up, but I spontaneously felt the urge to needle her as she walked out the door. "Remember, if you get groped in that bikini, it's your own fault, okay?"

I knew I was losing some of my moral high ground, but I didn't care.

"What a bitch," the girl said. "I'm sorry again for that creep."

"It wasn't your fault," I said. I looked out the front of the store - I could see our towels and cooler from here - and pointed out to Marco that Tobias was looking for us. He nodded and ran out to grab him and my sisters.

I turned to the girl at the register. "Thanks for that, by the way."

She smiled at me. "No problem," she said. "I'm Elena, by the way."

"Rachel." I swear, I didn't notice the wheelchair till I shook her hand.

Elena saw my expression and laughed. "It's okay. And before you ask, it was a car accident," she said.

"Sorry," I said lamely.

She shrugged. "Such is life, right?"

Tobias and the girls came in, Marco in tow. There were children's wetsuits in the store, and while Sara had no interest in our fake surf lesson agenda, of course it worked out that Jordan was suddenly all about the idea of surfing herself. I sighed, mentally kicking myself that I didn't pawn them off on Melissa for the day.

"What are we going to tell her when Tobias and I don't take surfing lessons?" I asked Marco.

"What do you mean?"

"Well I wasn't planning on actually paying for surf lessons."

Marco just smiled. "You know I can just teach Jordan how to surf, right?"

Frank came back out and clapped his hands together. "Alright," he said. "My deepest apologies for the earlier unpleasantness. Let's get you guys some suits."

We actually did okay as far as my budget. We averaged about fifty bucks a suit. I found a women's suit in black and blue. It was about forty dollars, it fit like a dream, and it also came in a seafoam green, which of course reminded me of Cassie's go-to one-piece. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I'd completely forgotten that Marco already had a wetsuit. This in spite of the fact that Marco wearing it the other day had given me the idea to get them in the first place.

Tobias picked out the identical suit in red rather than orange. "Should we get Jake the grey or the yellow?" he asked.

Marco shrugged. "Have you ever seen the boy wear yellow in his life?"

"Good point," I said, "Get the grey one."

"Any idea what size Jake needs?" Tobias asked.

"How tall is he?" Frank asked.

Marco held up his hand above his head. "I think about six foot one, maybe six two. What d'you think, an LT?"

Frank nodded. "Yeah, get the LT. If it doesn't fit, bring it back."

"What about Cassie?" I asked.

"Is she about your size?" Elena asked.

I shrugged. "She's a little shorter than I am, but she's a little fuller in the chest and hips. Girl's got curves."

"Is she single?" Elena asked.

"Professionalism, chica," Frank said.

"Yes, father, I know. I'd get her a size smaller than you. The suit will stretch, so it's more about fitting her height. Like the boss says, if it doesn't fit, bring it back in."

Marco looked at me in my wetsuit - I hadn't taken it off yet - then at the three suits on the counter. "You guys know we're going to look like some kind of discount Power Rangers on the beach," Marco quipped.

I winced, but still laughed. "You're not wrong."

"What about me?" Jordan asked. She'd found a kid's wetsuit in purple and indigo.

I thought for a second. None of the suits had come close to the hundred-dollar mark like I'd feared. It was only about thirty bucks, and I'd expected to buy five suits anyway. "Yeah, what the hell."

We were about to check out, but Elena made a gesture to Frank, and he seemed to get the idea that she wanted to talk to me alone. I found out why rather quickly when I saw a pack of NipEAZE and a small tub of Vaseline on the counter. I knew exactly what she was getting at.

I couldn't help it, I started to laugh.

"Hey," she said. "I'm being serious."

"No, it's not that," I said, trying to reign it in. "I'm captain of the lacrosse team. I have both of those at home."

Irrespective of gender, nipple chafing is a serious concern for joggers - and also surfers, apparently. Yeah, yeah, I laughed too when my lacrosse coach brought it up in one of our first practices. All us girls had. But the first and only time I bled into my sports bra, you'd better believe it wasn't funny anymore. The insult to injury is that if you're running hard enough to chafe that badly, you're definitely going to have a good sweat going, which stings more than you want to know.

Elena also told me that I should wear a sports bra under the wetsuit. I nodded and thanked her for the help. I wasn't really as worried about the nipple guards or breast support. I wasn't sure how many layers I'd be able to morph, even with the wet suit as snug as it was. And while I was probably going to end up wearing the damn thing for a whole twenty-four hours on the cargo ship, it's not like I couldn't just morph out of any discomfort as needed.

All told, our final purchase came to just two thirty, and I would have paid that without a problem. Not that it wasn't a substantial chunk of change for me, but it was less than half of what I thought I was going to spend and I was still all in on Tobias's plan on ripping off car thieves.

But Frank gave us a twenty percent discount.

"Oh, you don't have to do that," I said.

Frank waved a hand at me. "I don't know how you got Marco down here and I don't care," he said. "But you're getting a discount."

"You always were pushy, Frank," Marco said with a smile.

"So was Eva," he said wistfully. "I think someone told me they saw you surfing the other day."

"Yeah," Marco said, his voice bereft of his usual levity. "She used to tell me the ocean would give you all the answers if you just listened to it."

"So what changed?" Elena asked.

Marco shrugged. "New questions, maybe. Or maybe I'm just finally brave enough to hear answers I didn't want to know before."

I knew Marco was smart. I knew he was silly. I knew he liked to flirt.

But I'd never really seen him as being that deep, not till that moment.

"Marco's gonna teach us to surf!" Jordan blurted.

Frank seemed surprised by this information. "Oh, are you now? You know, we can always use another instructor. And we are hiring."

"You are?" I asked, suddenly remembering my pledge to come back with job applications.

Elena nodded. "Yeah, and we could use some more cashiers. We had some people quit on us."

"Hmm. I have been wanting more hours at the theater," Marco said. "Do you have anything I can look over?"

Elena handed each of us an application. Mine was just a one-page front and back form, but Marco's was a pair of brochures, one for diving and one for surfing. I thanked Frank and Elena for taking time out of their busy day to give us such preferential treatment. Marco was unable to escape a massive hug from Frank.

Coming out of Cabrera's, we split up. My sisters dragged Tobias right back to the sand sculpture they'd abandoned for the last ten minutes, and I sat down on a towel next to Marco. We put Jake and Cassie's wetsuits in his duffel bag along with the receipt. I very carefully and neatly folded my application and put it in my purse. All in all, for about maybe three hours at the beach, it wasn't a bad day. Melissa was thinking about the baby-sitting window, we had the suits, Jake was getting the GPS tracker tomorrow, I was going to apply to my first-ever real job, and I'd apparently signed up Jordan and myself for surf lessons with Marco. Not a bad day, and there wasn't much else we could do till we had the SUV back.

I grabbed another drink out of the cooler and checked my phone for messages.

I had an unread message from Melissa: "My parents said it's okay!"

It was from about half an hour ago. I quickly texted her back. "I have to talk to Jake and Mom tonight. Will let you know dates as soon as I know what's going on."

It was almost two in the afternoon. Sara had woken me up around nine, and Jake had picked us up around ten. We'd been at the beach almost four hours. I was tired, I was bored, and I was anxious to get onto something else.

"What time does Jake go in today?" I asked.

Marco was reading the instructor brochures. He didn't look up when he answered. "He goes in at four. Why, what time is it?"

"About two."

I had a pretty good sense of Jake's habits. He'd probably swing by his place to take a shower and change after spending this long at Cassie's place. And from there he'd come grab me to drive him to work so I could have the SUV. It occurred to me that I'd have either have to get a ride home from the parking garage at some point or else get someone to pick up Jake from work. There was no way in hell I'd be able to drive out after midnight to pick him up. But it was going to be another hour and a half before I had the SUV and all I wanted to do was go home. Throw some laundry in the machine, put on a movie for my sisters, and try to catnap for a bit. Maybe invite Melissa over as an extra pair of eyes.

The silence eventually got the better of me. "So, thinking of taking them up on their offer?"

"Actually, yeah, I am."

"Really?" I asked, surprised. "Hey, how much are lessons here, anyway?"

"Here? Four seventy-five."

"God damn," I said.

Marco laughed. "Well, you get five lessons for that. You do a two-hour private lesson your first day. For newbs, the first time you go up on the board, you need that one-on-one sesh. And then after that, you book four three-hour group runs."

I nodded. "I guess, that's not so bad. About a hundred bucks a lesson. So how much would you get paid?"

"Frank pays a hundred a day," he said. "Two private runs and one group run, so I'd spend a solid seven hours on the water. Then there's all the stuff you have to do in between. Equipment checks, safety routines, log books, stuff like that. But even if I only work on my days off at the Regal, it's still a good idea."

"You're going to work both jobs?" I asked.

"If I can, yeah. I need the money."

"What for?" I asked.

He sighed. "My dad isn't getting any better. Money's getting tight."

"I'm sorry," I said, not sure what else to say.

"Sometimes I wonder if he's ever going to come back," Marco said. "The grief books, they said sometimes it works like that. That for some people, it just never really goes away. Complex Bereavement Disorder. For about two years now, he's just been completely checked out."

The look on Marco's face was a twisted mess of desperate resignation. I recognized it too easily. It was something I'd seen in the mirror before. The realization that this is reality today, and it will be the same tomorrow. That this is who you are, and this is who you have to be rather than who you want to be. And it makes you want to cry, but you know it wouldn't change anything so everything goes numb inside. There was shame in his eyes, but mostly what I saw was his age. He was only a few months older than me, but in that moment, Marco was tired all the way to his soul.

"You wanna talk about it?" I asked.

He sighed, exasperated or embarrassed, who could say. "Everyone asks that. I know they mean well, but the issue has never been me being able to talk about it. It's that no one could understand it if I did. I could talk to you about grief and coping mechanisms all afternoon, but that wouldn't really make you understand what it's like to lose your mother. You can pretend, but you can't actually know unless you do."

"I don't know what you're going through," I said, "and I won't pretend I understand. But if you want to talk at me, I'm cool with that."

Marco looked past me, out to the sand and surf where my sisters were playing with Tobias. Tobias was the only one of us that might have any insight on what he was going through, but it wasn't something Marco would ever bring up with him.

"Losing Mom," he said, "that was tough. She was so much to so many people. We had a paddle-out service right out there, at the end of the Wharf. Frank closed shop for two days, which is a big deal for him. But I got through that. I had Jake to lean on, his mom was huge for me for about two months. I stopped going to mass, which I'm sure Mom wouldn't like, but I did right by me. I did what I had to do to move on. Some days were just numb, and others I'd cry randomly at the slightest provocation. Like I'd smell lilacs and remember her damn body wash or something, y'know?"

I nodded, blinking away tears.

"But my dad… I knew my dad loved my mom, but I didn't know how much till after she was gone. She was his whole world, and I still have no idea how someone like my dad meets a woman like that, but…" He smiled then, just for a second despite the tears, before the wistful memory turned to stone. "I knew we were in trouble about a month later. He used up all his bereavement time. Then all his vacation time. When he ran out of sick days, his boss came to our house. I'll tell you right now, I swear to Christ I don't think Dad recognized him. I watched my dad's boss, a guy I had never even seen smile in my life, break down crying in my living room as he fired my dad."

"Oh, God, I'm sorry."

"Oh, it got worse quick. Mom didn't have life insurance, and we went through her retirement fund to cover funeral costs. That gave us a much-needed buffer, but when Dad stopped pulling in an income, that buffer started to dwindle rapidly. I got a job at the cinema. I had to push my dad constantly for days to get him to find another job. He does menial data entry work now. But we couldn't live on part time minimum wage and a third of what he was making before. Dad sold his car, because he couldn't bring himself to sell Mom's. We sold the house and moved to the apartment. Dad does nothing but work, sleep, and watch TV, so after Elfangor, I just couldn't do it anymore. I called and cancelled our subscription. I don't need internet till school starts, and if he needs to watch TV that bad, he can buy DVDs."

"I didn't know you had it so rough," I said, feeling very unhelpful. Still, I could sympathize with him. I had to take care of my sisters. It's open to debate whether or not that was technically my responsibility, but it was certainly my obligation. More often than I cared to admit, I felt like my parents were being selfish. But I knew they were paying all the bills, I knew we had two cars, insurance, the mortgage, college funds, and they were putting money into savings and retirement. So I tried not to complain.

But Marco was basically raising his dad rather than the other way round. And that was a level of fucked up I couldn't even comprehend.

"It is what it is," Marco said helping himself to another bottle of water out of the cooler. "Thanks for getting the suits, by the way. I know that was expensive."

I knew I shouldn't say anything. I knew I should have talked to Tobias first. But after hearing what I'd heard - and as useless as I felt after hearing it - I didn't care. I'd had my ass grabbed in public by a stranger. I had a job application in my purse. And I was more resolute than ever that I needed to have a firm talk with my parents about was and was not my responsibility. I was mad, and I hated feeling powerless.

So I asked a question I should have asked.

"So, feel like making some money?"


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen**

* * *

Sometimes Marco bothers me. At least he used to. Goofy, sarcastic, and intelligent bordering on arrogance, he was hard to take at times. But truth be told, I needed someone like Marco around. He might make a lot of inappropriate jokes, and he might seem like he doesn't take anything seriously, but I know people that take everything too seriously and I can't stand them. But Marco - and I don't know if this is because of the fallout of his mom's death or what - can be incredibly pragmatic.

He didn't ask questions. He didn't judge. Jake would have asked questions. Cassie would have judged. He looked at me a little sidelong and finished his water bottle.

"What do you have in mind?" he asked in a tone that said he was in regardless. If I told him we were going to start dealing crank or something, he would have passed, but he knew me. He knew I could be reckless, but he knew I wasn't crazy.

"It's Tobias's plan," I said. I looked around again, trying to make sure we weren't going to be overheard. "Ripping off car thieves."

Marco seemed to consider that. I could see the gears moving in his head. "I assume this is just the three of us, right?"

I thought about that for a minute. "Probably for the best, right? Jake and Cassie don't need to know about it."

When it comes down to it, if Tobias and I told Jake what we were planning, he'd more than likely actually come in it with us. But Jake is big about rules and consequences. He's pragmatic, too. After all, he rolled with it when Tobias and I stole that car. I mean, I didn't tell him about the three hundred bucks in cash I'd found in the glove box, but he never asked me where I got Tom's graduation present, so I kinda assumed he knew anyway. But Jake's just not what I'd call a risk-taker. He wouldn't keep us from doing it, but he'd suck all the fun out of it. Cassie, on the other hand, would try to stop us. No threats, no violence, she'd just guilt trip the three of us into next week or till we didn't want to do it anymore.

He nodded. "How much are we thinking?"

"Well, I just spend two hundred and change today. I promised Melissa an extra hundred to get her on board with baby-sitting. Jake bought the GPS tracker. Not to mention the camera you guys put in Chapman's office. Tobias said we could probably get up to a grand, just depends on how often we do this."

Marco nodded again. "So how would we be doing this?"

I told him what Tobias had told me to the best of my recollection. Marco nodded intermittently, just listening intently. Marco wasn't necessarily excited about the plan, but he didn't seem bothered by it either.

"We need to talk to Tobias about the rest of it," I said, not sure what else to add.

"Probably need to be rid of your sisters before we could have that conversation," he said, watching the three of them in the sand.

"Yeah, I know. Shall we go see what they're making?"

"Yeah, might as well." Marco grabbed the duffel bag. Now that I'd made purchases, I was less okay leaving the beach stuff alone, so I appreciated him carrying the stuff.

Tobias and my sisters were making a giant crab. Compared to the other things I'd seen him make, this one wasn't as huge, but it was still a decent size. It wasn't done, obviously. I couldn't have been talking to Marco for even half an hour. Still, he'd done a lot of broad strokes. The crab wouldn't be doable as a full sculpture, so what Tobias had done instead was to make something of a sand pile and hollow it out on one side. You could only see the front of the crab and it's two oversized pincers, and the rest was hidden.

"God, Tobes, how do you do this kind of stuff?" Marco asked.

Tobias laughed. "Dude, I don't know, I picture what I want to make in my head, and then I do it."

"Why a crab?" I asked.

"Because I wanted a crab," Sara said, like that should explain everything.

"Well, that makes sense," Marco said.

"We found one on the beach," Jordan clarified.

"Ah," I nodded. I took a few photos of Jordan and Sara sitting next to the unfinished sand sculpture. I took a few shots of Tobias as he worked detail into the crab shell and it's weird mouth. Tobias showed Marco how he shaped the pincers, how he added a little wet sand to create the bumps in the exoskeleton.

For half an hour, the five of us - but mostly Tobias - worked on the sand sculpture. Marco, by the way, has a very sick sense of humor. While my sisters and I were helping add in pointless details to the outside of the crab's lair - starfish, clams, shapes that were easy to make - Marco had decided to go ahead and add a severed human leg to the front. Like the crab had caught and eaten a person and all that was left was this bit of leg, like from the knee down. Tobias must have helped, because it looked good. The leg was held toward the crab mouth by one of the giant pincers.

I rolled my eyes. "Is that really appropriate for little kids?"

Sara squealed. "Oh, that's so icky," she said. I felt worried for a second. Then she added. "I love it." Hmm. It occurred to me that Sara might be a little off. Or she was just being seven and I was making a big deal out of nothing.

All in all, it really did look amazing, if a tad morbid.

"I wish I could paint it," Tobias said.

I blinked at that. "Paint it?"

He nodded. "Yeah. You have to use vegetable dyes, organic colors that kinda stuff. But put it in an airbrush, you can go over the sand with colors that won't hurt the beach."

I shrugged and picked up my phone from my purse. I took another few shots of the sand sculpture and noticed the time. Jake would be showing up for me to take him to work. I pointed this out and herded my sisters and the boys back to the cooler. But when we got back to the rest of our stuff, I noticed Cassie standing outside Cabrera's, leaning against the outer wall. She was wearing her familiar seafoam swimsuit and cut-offs, and she had Jake's keys in her hand, twirling them absently around her finger.

Cassie did not have a license. Permit, yeah, but not a license.

I waved her over, it took a minute for her to see us, but she smiled and sat down on one of the towels. Marco tossed her a water bottle.

"Jake let you drive his SUV?" I asked, bewildered.

She rolled her eyes. "You know damn well I can drive, Rae."

"Hey, Cassie," Jordan said. "Are you here for swimming lessons, too?"

Cassie smiled. "No, sweetie, not today. I'm actually here to take you guys home."

"Awww, do we have to go home yet?" Sara asked.

She looked at me and shrugged. "I wouldn't mind swimming a bit myself, but I don't know if Rachel has plans for you guys. Ask her."

"What are we doing after this anyway?" Jordan asked.

"Laundry," I said with a laugh. "We have chores, today. Maybe watch a movie or something."

"Can we stay, Rachel, please?" Sara pleaded.

I nodded. "Yeah, but just another hour. We do have stuff to do."

"Good," Sara said. "We're having fun."

"Oh, fun, you say? What kind of fun?"

"Rachel bought wetsuits," Jordan said. "We're going to learn how to surf!"

"Ah, so even at the beach, you couldn't pass up a little shopping?"

I gave her a playful shove. "Shut up, Cass. Come on, we have to see how well it fits you."

She rolled her eyes and handed me her purse and Jake's keys, and dropped the shorts. She tried the wetsuit on over her one-piece. Sure enough, it fit her just fine.

"Damn," I said. "I think Elena would take off another ten percent if she got to see you in this."

Cassie blushed. "Who's Elena?"

"My new lesbian BFF at Cabrera's," I said casually.

She laughed and shook her head. "Rae, I swear, I can't take you anywhere," she said as she shimmied out of her wetsuit. The elastic neoprene material made getting in and out of the suits a little awkward to say the least.

"She gave me an application," I said. "I think I'm going to give it a shot."

"Yeah?" Cassie lost her smile. She knew everything there was to know about my relationship with my parents. "That's going to be a fun convo."

I shrugged. "Has to be done, right? Come on, Jordan and Sara are just itching to show you their sand sculpture."

We spent about another hour there. Cassie was just as impressed with the sand crab as I'd been, but eventually we ended up back in the water. Cassie actually did go through with the drown-proofing, but only because Jordan had assumed that since I'd bought her a wetsuit that she must be taking surf lessons too. But Cassie didn't complain and it went by quickly.

Eventually, though, it was time to go.

As much as I wouldn't have minded staying at the beach longer, it just wasn't in the cards. We did have laundry to do, few other chores, and I knew we were going to have to meet in the woods and try Aximili again after Jake got off work. It took awhile to get everyone in the car. Marco and Tobias carried the cooler for me, so I carried Marco's duffel. Cassie had hold of one of my sisters in each hand. It was a fun day, but I felt exhausted when I clicked my seatbelt.

"I'm hungry," Sara said the second I turned the ignition

I glanced at the dash clock. It was after five. I wasn't in the mood to make anything. "You guys fine with pizza?" I asked.

My sisters squealed with enthusiasm. No one else said anything.

"Tobias? What do you want on your pizza?"

He shook his head. "You don't have to order for me, Rachel."

"Pfft, I don't have to, no, but I'm going to, so think what you want. I'll place the order when we get home."

"We're all going to your house?" Marco asked.

"Yeah, why not? I don't feel like being home by myself right at the moment." I caught Marco's eyes in the rearview. I thought I saw him give me just the slightest nod. Could have been my imagination. But I needed to have my friends over. I needed to feel like I wasn't alone. All of us where in more or less the same boat.

Cassie maybe not as much. I could make the argument that she was treated like an employee, that her relationship with her dad had become strained ever since we'd hit puberty and he'd realized he was raising a girl and gone into full dad mode. But she had a better relationship with her mom, and she didn't see the WRC as being the workload that I did. She was raised on it, so that was just life for her, no more and no less.

I knew Marco had problems after his mom died, but I hadn't known he was barely keeping his homelife together till that afternoon. He was like me in that regard. A little ashamed, but also trying desperately to not admit defeat. That mindset that we were strong enough to just endure two more years. Two more years and we'd be done.

Not that things would be easier as adults. I knew they wouldn't be.

And of course there was Tobias. He was a mystery to me, a riddle. I didn't know what it was like to grow up poor. I had never been abused by my parents - not physically anyway. And yet I felt like he was just at some weird peace with his situation in a way that never made sense to me. Or it hadn't made sense to me, not till he brought up his heist plan. It wasn't Zen, it was nothing deep, it just looked like that on the outside. What allowed him to function so easily in his world was his willingness to not matter. That's why he talked to us about the chop shop the other night, why he wanted to stick it to his uncle just a bit.

When we got to the house, my sisters ran upstairs to change and I herded everyone else into the kitchen just because of the linoleum floor. Marco had his and Tobias's clothes in the duffel. Cassie hadn't expected to need to change, so I told her to run up to my room and grab some of my sweats. That left Marco and Tobias to take turns changing in the guest bathroom. When Cassie came back downstairs, I went up to my bedroom and threw on a shirt and yoga pants. Nothing fancy, just something comfy.

I reached under my bed and fished around till I found the plastic bag I was looking for. I'd dropped the one-piece I'd worn for aquatic morphing into a trash can liner. I'd been worried my room was going to smell like the beach, but truth be told, the one-piece was dry when I'd demorphed on the roof of the Aquarium. Apparently if I didn't want to morph it wet, it wouldn't be. I guess subconsciously I was just bringing the suit while somehow or another excluding the water, but of course how that happened was beyond me. Elfangor actually said he didn't fully get it either, and that made me a little happier. I added it to the laundry anyway, though. I can't say why, I guess alien tech notwithstanding, I just felt it needed washed. I debated on whether or not I should wash the boys' trunks or Cassie's suit. Ultimately, I thought it would be rude not to. They wouldn't get them back till they were dry, but that didn't bother either of them.

I ordered four pizzas. I let everyone pick toppings for half a pizza. I remember one double extra cheese, which I know was Sara's and Dad's. Dad's not that fancy and Sara just doesn't really have the pallet to appreciate sausage or pepperoni. I ordered the chicken spinach alfredo for me and Mom. I don't remember what the others ordered.

We all ended up in the living room. Marco and Tobias had never been over to my house before. I'd never been to either of theirs, either.

"Can we watch Netflix?" Jordan asked.

I shrugged. "That should really be up to our guests."

"I don't mind," Tobias said. Cassie and Marco mirrored those sentiments.

So it was that all of us ended up watching one of the Equestria Girls movies. I'd seen the movie a few times, so I didn't really care about Sunset Shimmer and Canterlot High. What interested me was that I had about half an hour to kill before pizza showed up, so checked my messages. Unsurprisingly, I had nothing from my parents. But I sent Melissa a message: "Bored. What's up?"

She messaged back a few minutes later. "Not much. Missed you. What did you do today?"

I summed up my entire day in a handful of texts. I'd gotten up earlier than I'd wanted, taken my sisters to the beach, been groped by some douchebag, and spent a large chunk of my stash on wetsuits and pizza. Now I was semi-watching a kids' movie.

"Fucking creep," she said.

"Yeah. Oh, before I forget. I met the owner and his daughter at Cabrera's. They're hiring."

"No way. That's awesome!" she sent back.

"Yeah, I have an application in my purse."

"You coming over tonight?" she asked.

"No, I want to, but I need to talk to mom about the camping trip."

She sent me a sad face emoji.

I felt bad immediately. I knew she was just hurting for genuine, sincere human contact and not the Yeerk off-brand version she was getting. "I'll see if I can come over tomorrow or if you can come here. Okay?"

"Okay," she said, adding a wink emoji for some reason.

"Rachel," Cassie said. "Pizza guy's here."

"Oh, sorry." I was so engrossed texting Melissa that I hadn't heard the doorbell. I went to the door and paid the delivery guy, gave him a good tip, and sat the pizzas down on the coffee table.

Jordan paused the movie. "Who were you texting?"

"Oh, uh, Melissa. She's been looking for a job, so I told her about Cabrera's."

"Did you order any sodas?" Marco asked.

"Shit, no, I forgot. There's iced tea in the fridge, though. Cups are in the cupboard left of the stove."

Marco came back into the living room with six plastic tumblers, some plates, and a stack of napkins, plus the whole gallon jug of tea. He topped off a cup for everyone while Tobias helped me serve out pizzas.

I put the movie back on.

But soon the movie was over, and I knew my day of chilling with my friends had come to a close. Tobias had eaten his half a pizza, and I was happy. Every time I saw Tobias eat, I always had the nagging suspicion that was the first time he'd eaten that day. Marco found the roll of aluminum foil in the kitchen and wrapped up the rest of his and Cassie's pizza. I put the rest of the pizza in the oven and then moved the laundry over to the dryer. Tobias had gathered all the dishes and cleaned up all the stuff in the living room while I'd been doing that. Cassie and the boys took my sisters out to the SUV again. It was time for everyone to go home.

Strictly speaking, Marco and Tobias weren't really supposed to be there, anyway. Not that mom ever explicitly said I couldn't have boys over, but I needed as much high ground as I could muster if I was going to be having this heart to heart tonight.

And that was something I had to do alone.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty**

* * *

We dropped off Marco first just because he was closer. He thanked me again for pizza, told me he had fun, all the usual goodbyes. I wondered how his evening was going to go. I made a mental note to text him. He dealt with a level of bullshit that far exceeded my own.

I wanted to take Tobias to his place, but I didn't make the decision for him. Jake said he was better off in the woods for now. So I asked him instead. "Tobias, are you helping Cassie at the Center tonight?"

He smiled. A real smile, not another of the hollow ones I usually saw. "Yeah, assuming Cassie doesn't mind the help."

"Ha, like I'm gonna turn down free help," Cassie said with a wink. She was next to me, riding shotgun. "And speaking of help, I take it you already talked to Melissa?"

"Yeah, her parents said up to five days, no problem."

Cassie frowned at that. The fact of the matter was that with two Controllers for parents, having Melissa out of the house was just convenient for the two Yeerks in the house. Melissa didn't know what was going on with her parents and she was unlikely to ever guess the outlandish truth, but she knew something was wrong. And I didn't want to even guess what the two Controllers would get up to with a few days without their daughter.

"What about five days?" Jordan asked.

"Oh, I was thinking of going camping with Jake and Cassie. If it's okay with Mom and Dad, then Melissa is going to watch you guys for a few days."

"What if your mom says no?" Cassie asked.

I sighed. "I don't know. I've had Melissa take them a few hours here and there, they've spent the night at the Chapman's before, but I've never asked Melissa to watch them for this long. I don't know, I'll talk to Aunt Jeanette, I guess. We still don't have dates nailed down, so maybe a weekend with Aunt Jean and three days with Melissa? I'll probably be able to work it out… I hope."

She gave me a sympathetic - though not very optimistic - smile.

"Did you talk to your parents about going camping yet?" I asked.

She nodded. "Yeah, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Dad said he's just going to pull some of his students into the WRC rotations."

"Wow, just like that, huh?" Tobias asked.

She laughed. "Actually no. It took me a lot of my very best wheedling, and then I finally just told him it was his idea in the first place."

"So then he caved?" I asked.

"Oh, hell no. My dad does not cave so easily, and you know it. What happened is he tried to spin it that camping trips alone in the woods are perfectly fine for boys, but you and I - being girls - we wouldn't really enjoy it. He says this straight-faced, too, like we don't live next to a hiking trail or that I haven't spent nearly every day of my life covered in hay and shit surrounded by animals."

I made a face and Cassie laughed.

"I know, right? Well, so Mom overhears this little gem of parental misogyny directed at her daughter. You wanna piss off a woman with two doctorates, go right on and tell her what girls can't do. And then add full mamma bear mode on top of that. She tells him in no uncertain terms that either I was allowed to go camping or else he was welcome to sleep in the tent himself until I was."

I laughed. "I love your mom."

"I still had to assure him you and I were going to have our own tent and all that, but at this point, he just doesn't want Mom to kill him, so I'm just trying to ride it out."

I laughed, till I saw Tobias in the rearview. It felt weird to talk about parent problems in front of an orphan. He had to have long-since lost all semblance of what normal parenting looked like. He had never had a real dad, not that I knew at least. He had his aunt's boyfriends - assholes that had presumably victimized him - and the uncle that mostly just ignored him, though I was sure some nights were worse than neglect. And he hadn't had a mother in nearly a decade. I knew nothing of his aunt, not for sure anyway, but I had the hunch if she were hit by a bus or something that would probably be a net gain for humanity in the long run. And sadly, if Tobias ever found out something terrible happened to one of the terrible people in his life, I couldn't shake the notion he'd be sad for them. They didn't deserve him. And he deserved better. I really wanted to give him a hug. But I had a suspicion that would do nothing to reduce the level of awkward in the car.

But I waved as he got out of the car and he waved back, another genuine smile. Maybe it wasn't awkward for him. Maybe - and I could only speculate - but maybe he lived vicariously through us. Maybe Cassie's story about her parents made him feel something. I don't know what, but maybe the stories made him feel less alone. Maybe we reminded him that the world wasn't all shit.

Or maybe I was deluding myself to ease my own sense of guilt. Who could say, really?

Despite my sisters in the backseat, I felt very alone in the car as I drove from Cassie's to the parking garage. Sure enough, Aunt Jeanette was there waiting in the garage, just like she'd said she'd be. I'd called from the kitchen after the movie and she'd agreed to meet me. I think my nervous energy amused the shit out of her. And now she was just leaning against the back of her SUV, the new hybrid whose purchase had enabled Jake to inherit the model I was there to park.

In some ways, the argument could be made that if Aunt Jeanette hadn't bought that SUV, none of this would have happened. Without Jake to bring me home that night, my mom wouldn't have let me go. Marco and Tobias would have likely found their own ways home. And none of us would have met Elfangor.

I missed him terribly then, just suddenly out of the blue, and it was like Marco said. Random fits of grief you don't see coming.

"Sorry for the inconvenience," I told her, as I hopped into her SUV.

"Rachel, honey, it's no trouble at all. Between you and me, I needed something to do. The house is too quiet when Jake's not home."

I sighed. "I wouldn't know what that's like."

My aunt frowned but she didn't say anything till we pulled up back at my house. "Wait, wait. Your mother's not home yet?"

Jordan laughed. "Mommy doesn't get home this early." She said it with such mirth. It was funny to her that her mom would be home for dinner. Like she didn't realize it was out of the ordinary for us to be on our own from sunrise to sunset. She didn't know a reality where dinner time included her parents.

"It's almost quarter till seven," Aunt Jean said.

I shrugged. "She's usually home around eight."

"Well what about your dad?"

I sighed. I told her the same thing he had told us. "Dad usually has to stay late after he gets back from travel," I said. It was possible that was actually true. I could see him having a ton of office stuff to do after being out of town. But it was equally possible - or probably far more likely - that he was just off with Sara's teacher. I didn't like to think about my dad being with my mom that way, so thinking about him and Miss Franklin…ugh .

So much ugh.

I wish I could say regurgitating his lie put a foul taste in my mouth or something, but it was honestly just so much easier to lie than explain it. I hated the fact that it didn't bother me.

But Aunt Jeanette gave me a look. It was the same look she'd had when she'd found out I didn't know how to cook. Like something was wrong and she didn't know what. Or what to do about it.

I didn't want to get into this. I didn't want to explain to my aunt how typical this was. Taking a deep breath, I steeled all of my resolve and tried to change the subject. "Has Jake talked to you about the camping trip?" I asked.

She smiled at that. "Yeah, he said he wanted to go off and at least have a little bit of summer fun. First summer with a job."

"Yeah, I'm hoping to join him on that."

"Did you apply to the theater?"

"No, I didn't. Melissa did, but while I was at the beach today, I made friends with this girl. Turned out her dad owns Cabrera's and she invited me to imply. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but I kinda got the impression if I apply, I'm getting hired."

Aunt Jeanette laughed. "Those kind of opportunities are rare, Rachel. I'd take the job."

I nodded. "Yeah, I'm going to fill out the application when we get home. But, um, can I trouble you for kind of a big favor?"

"What is it?"

"The camping trip," I said. "I want to go, but I need someone to watch my sisters. It's kinda last minute for Mom to find childcare for them, and I don't know if she'd be okay having Melissa watch them for that long."

Aunt Jeanette pursed her lips, clearly debating how she wanted to answer. Finally she spoke. "I think I might be able to work something out. I've been meaning to have a talk with my sister, anyway."

That sounded ominous, and I half wanted to ask what she meant by it but I decided to leave it go. I was going to have a talk with her too, but I didn't tell that to my aunt. Maybe I should have. But I still felt like this was a personal thing with my mother, and I didn't want to put my aunt in the middle of that. At least not more than I knew she was going to be. I was sure Mom would call her sister - who had literally written the book on parenting - after this talk.

I kept calling it a talk.

I knew it was going to be an argument. One way or another, I was going to push her between a rock and a hard place. I had to be able to defend my own selfish interests. I knew what I wanted. That much was easy. I wanted to have my distance and independence from my sisters, the freedom to have my own life without the daily babysitting. I was willing to bend on the after school sitting. When I had school five days a week, watching my sisters was less of an imposition. So I didn't think I was really asking for that much. But while I could site any number of reasons as to why I needed that freedom, why it was good for me personally, I wasn't sure that would be enough. If Mom had to find summer care for my sisters at the zero hour, that would be an unexpected child-care expense. She would ask why I hadn't told her this in May and I wouldn't have an answer. Because an alien wasn't trapped on the seafloor in May, Mom.

But I said goodbye to Aunt Jeanette and took my sisters inside. Sara put on the next Equestria Girls movie. Jordan found her tablet and went upstairs. I went to my room and collapsed on my bed.

Part of me wanted to just scream into my pillow. But I didn't. I really wanted to cry, but I'd trained myself too well to break down. When I had tears, I cried in silence. And despite the heat in my face, I knew I wasn't going to tear up.

When I was upset - a state of mind I knew too often - I tried to put that energy to good use. Cleaning to loud music was a favorite of mine. My sisters I don't think grasped it was a "Rachel's mad at the world" thing. I'm pretty sure they thought it was more of a "Big sister makes chores fun" thing. But the effect was the same either way.

My friends had cleaned up already, so I didn't need to worry about that. Instead, I carefully unfolded the application from Cabrera's from my purse, and smoothed it as flat as I could before laying it down in my scanner. If I messed up, I could print another one. And I could always print one for Melissa. Or Tobias if he wanted one. I hadn't thought to ask at the time, he'd been distracting my sisters while I'd paid for the wetsuits.

It was the first real job application I had ever filled out. I actually had to go into my parents' bedroom and open up the fireproof safe that Mom had in her closet to keep all the important papers and stuff. Keeping in mind that I am only sixteen, I didn't know my social security number by heart. All the passports, birth certificates, and other horribly important papers stayed in that box. I did feel sick when I saw Mom and Dad's wedding DVD. There were a bunch of thumb drives in there, too. Those were our photo albums. Sonograms, baby photos and videos of first steps and school recitals, vacations, family reunions.

So much reduced to so little.

And so much that wasn't there. I wondered what the most recent photo of me might be. Our last family vacation had been more than two years ago. And neither of my parents ever came to my lacrosse games. I didn't blame them for that. I understood schedule conflicts. But they didn't follow the team page on Facebook. Like they took zero interest in anything I did. Nothing I did mattered. Only the things I didn't do. If I left a mess in the kitchen, that mattered. If laundry didn't get put away, that mattered. But Mom hadn't really even listened to my sisters talk about the Aquarium. Mom didn't seem to care that I'd made the honor roll.

Really the only support I got from my parents was financial stability. And I did worry about whether I could afford to lose that.

But beyond the home they'd made for us, I didn't really know what it was like to have parents. Not for a long time, anyway.

That's nice, sweetie.

She was so disconnected from us, there were days where I wondered if she could do what I did for even a day, let alone for weeks on end. She was a great lawyer, she had exquisite taste in shoes, but I had a hard time picturing Mom reading Doctor Seuss at circle time in the library. She wasn't a PTA kind of mom.

I chose not to dwell on it. Not because it wasn't relevant, but because it wasn't going to help me finish my application. It reminded me of homework and while I hate busy work it took enough time and concentration that I felt a little better. Clarity. It hadn't taken that long, but it gave me the distraction I needed.

I knocked on my sisters' bedroom door and told Jordan to get a shower and change for bed. That was part of our routine. Showers, pajamas, and something we called cool-down time before bed. Usually I read a few chapters to Sara and Jordan would listen to music. When Jordan was out of the shower, I got Sara ready for hers.

I got my shower quickly. I didn't realize how much I needed it till I was in the hot water, but I didn't linger. It was time for teeth brushing, flossing, and bedtime story. Jordan was too old for bedtime stories, so she just listened to her headphones in the top bunk while I read to Sara. I was reading Chapter Seven of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone when I heard the door.

"Rachel?"

"Upstairs, Mom."

"Did you make dinner?" she called. There was no urgency to the question; she knew there was no way I would have let Jordan and Sara go hungry this late. It was simply her way of asking if there was food for her.

"Pizza's in the oven, Mom."

She didn't come upstairs. She didn't check on her daughters. She got herself food. She was gone when I'd woken up, and her first priority was food. Maybe I'm making too big a deal out of that. But it was nearly time for bed and she hadn't seen us all day. She hadn't texted me once, and that was typical. I didn't need my parents to take us to the places. I didn't expect them to work long exhausting hours and take Sara to the playground. But I wasn't asking for that. I just wanted to feel like we were a priority.

And maybe I'm making too much of a scapegoat to my mother. Dad wasn't home either and that was its own level of not-okay. But at least when Dad was home, he made time for us. I knew he was happy to see us when he did. And if the best he could do with us was take us to the movies or play Monopoly because he'd had too long a day, that was fine.

And look, I'd had day-long mall days with my mom. She took us places, she did. But she scheduled us in like a dentist appointment. She made time for us when it worked for her. Mommy days were special because who knew when the next one would be. And that's part of the reason this became a mother-daughter thing rather than a parent-daughter thing.

And Mom really did call the shots as far as that was concerned. If Dad had gotten home first and I went through that whole mess, I may well have gotten Dad on my side - probably not, as any change in the child-care situation would likely eat into his adultery schedule - but he'd have still told me to talk to Mom. He could greenlight a lot without talking to Mom, but there's not a snowball's chance in hell that he would clear me for a five-day absence without checking in.

So talking to him would ultimately have only been wasted energy.

I'd gone back to reading, and Sara conned me into reading Chapter Eight. I heard Mom come upstairs, heard her bedroom door close. She didn't check on any of us. When I finished the chapter and convinced Sara she wasn't going to weasel another chapter out of me, I gave her a kiss on the forehead and turned on her nightlight.

I didn't go to my room, but rather down the hall to my parents' room.

Calm. Calm, Rachel.

I steeled my nerves as best I could and knocked lightly on the door.

"Yes?" Mom said.

"Mom? Do you think I could talk to you about something?" I asked through the door.

"Can this wait till I get out of the tub, honey?"

I shifted my weight uneasily. "It's kind of important, mom."

She sighed, clearly worn out from a long work day. "Please, Rachel. Give me twenty minutes. I just got in the door."

Like I didn't already know that. But I yielded. Twenty minutes was fine. I could say I was gathering my will or having the argument inside my head or any of that, but really I had no problem with just stalling. I'd let myself stew in my own emotions on and off for much of the day. I'd actually come to conclusions and realizations that were new to me. I didn't quite realize how much I needed to do this and now I felt my heart pounding in my chest like some caged monster trying to get out.

Twenty minutes became thirty. Then at forty-five, I decided to just knock again.

"Come in," Mom said.

Mom was sitting at the vanity in her bathrobe, her hair up in a towel. The clothes she'd been wearing were set on hangers, ready to go to dry cleaning. She was taking off one of those facial masks she liked so much. That was her after-work routine. Bubble bath and a facial mask, maybe a cup of tea or a glass of red wine and she'd fall asleep watching HGTV.

"What is it, honey?" she asked.

"Would you be okay if Melissa watched Jordan and Sara for a few days?" I asked her. I was beyond sugarcoating anything, so I just came right out with it.

She rolled her eyes. I know she was exasperated from a long day at work, I know she just wanted to relax as was her after-work routine, but I felt something deep inside me twist into a knot. She rolled her eyes at me. It perfectly and succinctly summed up why it was impossible for me to talk to her like a grown-up like she was so fond of saying. Right off the bat, without even knowing what I wanted to talk about, she acted like I was being childish. Like when Sara was five and she'd interrupt people in the middle of conversations if we said something she knew how to spell. I hadn't said one word as to why and her attitude was already "this better be good." I felt heat in my face. And of course if I cried - or I lost my temper and screamed - then that would just be ammunition for her. It would just prove that I was being childish.

"May I ask why you want to pawn your sisters off on the poor Chapman girl?"

"Jake and Marco are going camping. Cassie and I are invited and I want to go."

She shook her head like I was being silly. She clucked her tongue, something that for some reason always made me think of some kind of judgmental church lady. "A camping trip," she muttered.

"I can't keep babysitting like this," I said flatly.

"Honey, if you want to go over your big sister stipend, your father and I will discuss it."

"Mom, it's not just the money. I don't want to spend every waking hour with my sisters."

"Rachel," she said, wiping off the rest of the mask, "where is this coming from? I thought you liked your arrangement."

"Yeah, when I was thirteen, mom. I could make more money flipping burgers part time. I want to do things on my own. Can't I just go out and enjoy some of my childhood while I still have it?"

"You can't just go out with your friends whenever you want, Rachel. You need to learn some responsibility, dear," she said. She wasn't even looking at me. She was looking in the mirror double-checking around her eyes to make sure she'd gotten all of the mask off. She wasn't even being malicious, really, she was just blithely rattling off a platitude.

But I was done. I was not going to be parented by fortune cookie.

"Responsibility?" I asked incredulously. "Are you fucking kidding me, Mom?"

"Rachel," Mom hissed harshly, "watch your language, young lady."

"No, I want to know. Are you being serious? You couldn't find a more responsible daughter and you either don't know that or you don't care, and I'm not sure which pisses me off more."

"Now you listen-"

I cut her off immediately. "Who does every shred of laundry in the house? Who scrubs the toilets, chops the piggy veggies, cleans the kitchen? I do all the grocery shopping. Did you know I learned more about cooking spending one day with Aunt Jeanette than I have in the last two years? Do you know that I've never even been on a date, let alone had a boyfriend? And you tell me I need to learn responsibility? When was the last time you were home that dinner wasn't delivery? When was the last time you were home before seven? Do you know how many days in May you didn't get home till after eight, 'cause I promise, I promise you that I do."

Mom turned to look at me and I could see the wreck of emotions on her face. I'd cut her, hit a nerve. She was hurt. I could've stopped, but I didn't. I felt tears running down my cheeks, but I didn't stop. I went for the kill. "Who reads Sara her bedtime stories? What's Jordan's favorite color? Like you'd know, huh? Newsflash, I'm not their mother, you are. Or did you forget? Or does it just not matter if it doesn't move you up the ladder at work?"

I felt the sting like I'd feel a thunderbolt. My cheek burned, and my anger throbbed harder. She'd slapped me. My mother had slapped me for the first time in her life. I saw her face, the recoil, the instantaneous regret. But I wasn't putting up with this shit.

I touched the scalding hot flesh of my cheek, staring her dead in the eye, and scoffed at her. Right then, I knew I was better than her. Whatever hierarchy or superiority she was supposed to have over me was gone, squandered. I wasn't her daughter. Not in that moment. No, I was just a girl in her bedroom. "Mother of the fucking year, aren't you? What the fuck do you know about responsibility, Nicole?"

I went to my room. I didn't run. I wasn't in any rush. I started packing. I grabbed my lacrosse duffel and started loading clothes, my tablet, phone charger. I grabbed my toothbrush out of the bathroom. When I turned around, my mother was standing in the hallway. I had never seen her look that mousey in my life. She looked like she was afraid of me. Rationally, I knew she wasn't sure what to do to fix this. She didn't know how to make it better. And she was terrified she was going to make it worse. But she'd hit me. She hit me, and that mousey cowardice was just another way to make it my fault. To make me feel guilty.

"Rachel…" she said, tears in her eyes. She reached a hand for me. I'm-"

"Sorry?" I cut her off, slapping her hand away. "Yeah, I fucking bet you are."

"I'm sorry, Rachel. Will you talk to me?"

"Ha. I try that all the fucking time, Mom. Do you hear me when I talk or am I just a white noise in the background to you?"

"Honey, is that really how you feel?"

"Mom," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose like I was trying to bear through a headache, "you and Dad work more than a hundred hours a week but I swear to Christ I'm the only thing keeping you guys from a goddamned CPS visit. You expect me to have my sisters from dawn till dusk, every day without fail. Without complaint, even. And nine days out of ten, I'm actually fine with that. I love my sisters, Mom, I really do. But if it weren't for Melissa, I wouldn't have been able to do lacrosse this season, and if she gets a part-time job, then I can't make practice next year. And I have an application all filled out and ready to go, by they way. Don't tell me I'm not responsible. I'm trying to get a scholarship, and every time I talk to you about it, you say 'Oh, it's just a sport, honey.' Like it doesn't matter if it matters to me, it just means you need to deal with your own kids, so you dismiss it. That's how much of a priority I am to you."

She didn't say anything. She stood rooted to the spot in the hallway outside my room. She didn't stop me when I walked out the door. I don't even know if I wanted her to try.

I didn't look back as I walked out alone into the night.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One**

* * *

I didn't know where I was going when I left.

I hadn't been in a position to make that kind of decision. The most obvious destination would be Jake's house. I'd be lying if I said Aunt Jeanette hadn't been on my mind when I'd left and I'd subconsciously walked roughly halfway there before I had enough presence of mind to actually think about where I wanted to spend the night.

But I chose not to go to Aunt Jeanette.

For one, there was a decent amount of shame involved in my departure. I didn't really regret anything I said. All of it was true. I did everything for my sisters and she was never there for us. There could be caveats and nuances to that, I knew she worked so hard because of us, but that didn't justify the way she treated us. No, I was just… I didn't want to go to Aunt Jeanette and have to tell her why I was there. I didn't want to call my mother out on her bullshit and then run to her sister. I thought that would be rubbing salt in a wound. My mom would probably call her for support, and as pissed as I was, I didn't want to hide in my aunt's guest bedroom while she played go-between with her sister.

That wouldn't be fair to my aunt.

Plus I was still supposed to meet the others tonight for what was most likely going to be our last meeting with Aximili. I hadn't heard from Jake since he'd dropped me off at work, and if I showed up at his house it would probably impact our ability to sneak out of the house.

The best option for me was easily Elfangor's camp in the woods. No one would look for me there, I could hang out with Tobias, sleep in the tent… Well, if he was there, sleeping arrangements would get weird. I don't know, maybe we could figure that out, maybe not. I could maybe sleep with Cassie, but then again I was worried about bringing my drama down on other people. Last thing I needed was to become a reason for Cassie's dad to nix her permission. And whether Cassie's or the woods beyond, it was something of a walk to get there and I couldn't morph and carry my stuff.

I didn't want to be on foot longer than necessary.

I was half worried my mother might come looking for me. Well, no, she had to stay with my sisters, but she could call Dad and have him come looking for me. Or, being the big shot attorney that she was, she could always call the cops. She had a working relationship with the chief of police, so that was a real possibility. Somehow, though, I kinda pegged her as too prideful to ask for outside help with a private matter, so I wasn't too worried about cops. But I was wearing a nightshirt and yoga pants at night, and being a rather attractive girl all alone, the feeling of vulnerability was inevitable.

Ability to become a bull grizzly notwithstanding.

So the only other place I could go was to Melissa's.

I wasn't totally sure that was the smart thing to do. I knew it wasn't, actually. I wanted to see my friend, I really did, but I also had plans to morph into a bird and fly off to the woods where we kept salvaged alien technology. With both of her parents being Yeerks… It had bad idea written all over it.

Fuck it.

I could just tell Melissa I couldn't stay. Pretend to have a change of heart or get one of my friends to call me and pretend it was my mom, that kinda thing. Walk out the front door and all that. I just needed a good bit of distance before I made any attempt at morphing. Or, thinking for ten seconds, I could text Jake and have him pick me up from Melissa's after work. I still had hours before he was off. She'd think I'd gone to stay with my cousin and I could morph from Jake's place without Aunt Jeanette ever knowing I was there.

As if I'd psychically willed it to happen, the second the thought went through my mind, my phone rang. It was my mother's ringtone. I pushed the button to silence the ringer and let it go to voicemail. I didn't want to be out at night, I really, really didn't, but I wasn't ready to talk to her yet.

I wasn't used to this. I'd gone off on her, I knew that, but I hadn't really yelled, I hadn't screamed. I'd cried, and my eyes were still puffy and sore, but all in all, I hadn't lost it, if that makes sense. But she had. I'd pushed her to a point where she'd gone into full defensive mode and she'd slapped me. I'd said nothing but the truth, and it had been enough to not only get to her - an attorney who'd been called every name there was over the course of her career - but made her feel like I'd been attacking her.

Or I just wasn't being respectful and she snapped that I didn't let her rest on the pedestal she'd built for herself.

In either case, I was used to my mother winning arguments, and while I felt oddly proud of myself for keeping my head and not collapsing into a puddle of tears while I told her off, being alone at night like this made the victory rather pyrrhic to say the least. When she won an argument, she didn't have to leave. But I did.

Maybe that's childish logic. It probably is. But if I stayed, if I went to my room and shut the door, wouldn't that have been pouting? Wouldn't staying just be an admission that no matter what she did or how she treated me that I'd stay and take it? Running out might not have been the most mature thing to do, but she'd be such a hypocrite to call me on it. Like she didn't run to Aunt Jeanette every time she got pissed off at Dad.

I pulled out my phone and tried not to stare at the voicemail notice on my homescreen. I had a destination and from my perspective it seemed like a win-win. I'd be away from my mother for awhile and she'd… do whatever the hell she did. Whether she called Dad, her sister, or just stayed up all night stewing or panicking. That was her business. I hoped maybe she'd cool down and realize I was right about everything, but I doubted that.

I scrolled through my contacts, making note of how far down on my recent calls I had to scroll past before I found my dad's number.

It only rang twice before he picked up. "Rachel? What's going on? Your mother is having a fit right now. Where are you?"

He was frantic. That actually made me smile. They did worry about me. I'd had to kick a fucking hornets' nest, but I got them to care about me for a change. I swallowed and trying to keep my voice even on the phone. "I got into an argument with… with Mom." I had tried to avoid that title. My mother. Nicole. Not Mom. Not tonight. "I'm going to Melissa's. I'll be back in the morning."

I didn't want to be back in the morning. I really didn't. But after the team meeting in the woods tonight, we were going to have our final time table for our mission. Our last real mission. And I knew right in that moment that I was going with or without permission. Aximili needed us and I was going. I could be grounded all summer when I got back, but he'd be alive, I'd have fulfilled whatever obligations I had to Elfangor, and who knows, maybe I'd have a job at the surf shop. Life would change but life always changes.

"Like hell!" my dad shouted into the phone. "You turn your ass around right now, miss, and go home."

"She hit me, Dad." I said it like I'd told him the weather.

He was silent for a long moment. He didn't know how to handle that either, I guess. He cooled considerably before he spoke again. "Hold on, honey. I'll be there in ten minutes."

Ten minutes? My father had a forty-five minute commute to work in the outskirts of San Jose. The only way he could be ten minutes away is if he just happened to already be most of the way home… or he was somewhere in Santa Cruz.

"No, that's okay, Dad. I wouldn't want you to have to stop fucking Miss Franklin on my account."

Part of me wished I could have seen his face right then. Was he shocked? Was he embarrassed? Pissed? He choked for a minute. "Rachel, I-"

"It's okay, Dad," I said. "I get it. Your sex life is more important than your daughter. Not like any of us need you home, right? Well, I guess Mom might, but it's not like you care about her feelings, huh? I'll be at Melissa's. Don't call. Don't show up. Leave me alone for a night. The two of you are world champions at that, so it should be easy for you guys. I'll be home in the morning, but I don't think you really want to deal with me tonight, do you, Dad? I mean, if you take me back home before I'm ready, who knows what might come up?"

The phone beeped as the call ended. I wasn't sure if I should take that as agreement or insult. Probably both. I hadn't really intended to say any of that. I really hadn't. But I'd been trying to convince myself since I'd found out that his affair was none of my business and I'd just realized I'd been enabling the whole thing. I had Jordan and Sara. His kids were fine, so he had time free.

I felt so used. My hair was still damp from the shower, but I still felt dirty.

I kept walking. I didn't want to linger in any one spot for too long. I didn't think my parents would call the cops, but that's not to say a nosey neighbor wouldn't report an unaccompanied minor that may or may not have been using profanity at an unreasonable volume for this time of night.

There weren't many people out though. I saw a jogger run by the intersection ahead, an elderly woman walking a little white dog. But mostly the residential streets were quiet. Each car that passed by, though, made me feel apprehensive.

I texted Jake. "Argument with Mom. Things are bad. Pick me up at Melissa's when you get off. Please."

Jake was hit or miss when he was working. Technically, the fact that he could text from work at all was a violation of his employee handbook. He had three managers, he'd said, and two of them didn't mind as long as he wasn't on his phone the whole shift and all his stuff got done. That usually meant as long as the bathrooms were clean and no one was at the snack bar, he could text every here and again. But the third guy was a bit of a stickler for rules, and when Jake worked with that guy, he could only text on his breaks. And either way, this was about the time for the last showing of the night, so regardless of which manager was there, he'd be busy for awhile. It was entirely possible he wouldn't text me back till he was done with his shift.

I took a breath, mindful that it seemed cooler than I'd expected, and called Melissa.

"Rachel! I was just about to text you!"

I couldn't help but smile despite everything else. She had such a warm personality, it was hard not to smile when I heard that level of exuberance on the phone. But the smile didn't last long. "I got into it with my mom," I told her.

"Oh, no. Is everything okay?"

"No," I said, noticing that the tears I'd managed to mostly contain seemed harder to hold back now. My throat was tight. "Nothing's okay, Mel. Can I come over?"

"Yeah, Rachel, of course."

"Okay, I'll see you soon," I sniffled.

I put my phone back in my bag and wiped my eyes. Melissa, like Cassie, could read me like a book. I knew I was going to have a long hard cry when I got there, and there was nothing I could do about it. Or wanted to, really. I couldn't tell Melissa about the Yeerk invasion, about her parents, and that killed me inside. I knew there were some secrets I was just going to have to keep from her for the rest of my life. But there were secrets I'd kept for a long time that I didn't feel like carrying anymore.

It wasn't that late when I knocked on the door of the Chapman house, maybe a quarter after nine. Melissa answered the door.

"Hey," I said, trying not to feel so damned awkward as I stepped into her house. "I'm sorry to just show up like this."

She hugged me like she was worried I'd fall apart if she didn't hold me together. "You don't have to apologize, Rachel. Not to me."

I smiled. That made me feel a little better. I set my bag on the floor under the end table as I sat down on the sofa. It hadn't been a far walk, but it felt good to take my shoes off and sit down. She had some anime paused on the TV, and I smelled popcorn.

"Where are your parents?" I asked.

She held up her hands in a search me look. "Dad is doing this overnight beach thing for that Sharing club. He asked if I wanted to go, but…" she sighed. "I don't know, I get a weird vibe from those people. I like civic activism, I like helping the homeless, and I get why my dad is such a part of it what with all the students that volunteer, but… I can't put my finger on it, but there's something off about that group."

I shrugged. "I don't know, I think all youth clubs are kinda off. You always get that core group that are just way too into it. So where's your mom?"

"Oh, she had to go up to San Jose for an educators' convention or some shit, left yesterday morning. Dad should be back tomorrow afternoon, Mom won't be back till the day after."

I nodded. "So that's why you were asking me to come over?"

She nodded. "It's funny. I spent most of the school year thinking about what I'd do if I didn't have my parents lording over me, but they're both gone and the most adventurous thing I've done is call you."

I looked at her with my best interrogation stare. I'd used it on my sisters a lot. "Really? That's the most adventurous thing you've done?"

She blushed. "Well, I did watch some hentai videos, but that's it."

"Eew," I said with feigned disgust, "please tell me that's not what this is."

She blushed even deeper. "No, I was watching Hellsing Ultimate . I was in something of a vampire kind of mood, and not the Twilight kind either."

I laughed at that. I recognized the title, but I'd never seen it. "Cool," I said, "I could go for a vampire evening."

She shook her head. "No."

I blinked at her. "What?"

She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head to the side, making a pointed exaggeration of her impatience. "If you came here because you wanted to hang out, I'd be fine to hit play. But you're not here for a sleepover, are you? You didn't come here to watch movies, you came here to hide from your parents."

"Are you upset with me?" I asked with a sigh. On top of everything, I really didn't want to get into BFF drama.

She shrugged. "Maybe. I honestly don't know, Rachel. Sometimes I feel like I'm really only your friend when you need me. You've been a little different the last few weeks, and don't tell me you haven't."

I winced. She wasn't wrong, but I couldn't very well tell her what the real reasons were for the shift in my behavior. The real reason I'd been different was that I spent the last week of school privately mourning the death of the alien soldier we'd been harboring. The week before that, we'd used the power of the Escafil device to plan the mission that got Elfangor killed. I had spent hours in her house as her pet cat, and to fully illustrate just how fucked up my life had become, even after going at it with my mom, telling my dad off on the phone, and staring one of my very best friends in the eyes, I was still curious just what the fuck Chapman had going on in the basement.

"It's complicated," I said.

"Calculus is complicated," she said. "And whatever's going on, I notice you haven't had any issues hanging out with Cassie, so you'll forgive me if this seems a little more personal."

"I'm not at Cassie's, am I?"

"Yeah, only because you didn't want to walk that far."

Well, she had me there. "Cassie… Look, it would've been a walk, but I could have made it to her place, Melissa. I didn't want to go there. She wouldn't understand what I'm going through."

"And I won't either if you don't tell me what's going on."

I couldn't tell her about Elfangor or Aximili, I couldn't tell her about her parents, but I wasn't there because of aliens. I was there over family stuff, and there was no reason I couldn't tell her that. I was deliberately a little vague in the telling of how and when I found out my dad was having an affair. I figured she'd take that as the reason I'd been off the last two or three weeks. I told her I'd been holding on to some unfamiliar emotions ever since I knew about the affair. Hell, I even threw in that I didn't know what my relationship to Cassie was supposed to be now that she had a boyfriend, and it was my cousin at that. Really, most of what I told her was the truth, stuff I didn't realize had been bothering me.

And then I told her point for point what had happened with my mother and the phone call I'd had with my dad.

"Damn, Rachel, when you go off, you go hard."

I dropped my head into my hands. "I know. I know. Part of me thinks I should feel bad, but I don't and that does make me feel bad. I'm tired of playing linchpin here and I just… I've never had an argument like this where I wasn't expected to apologize and I just don't think I did anything wrong."

I felt her hand on my back, her fingers moving in circles between my shoulder blades. It felt nice. Comforting. Something I wish my mother did for me, but I didn't associate my mother with comfort. "You didn't do anything wrong, Rachel. I don't think your parents should have ever put you in this position in the first place."

"I didn't really have a problem with it till May. Maybe it was just school getting out."

Melissa laughed. "Or you're just jealous."

"What?"

"Well, let's see here. Jake has a job, Marco has a job, I'm trying to get a job, and you just got an application to Cabrera's, right?" I nodded. "So pretty much everyone you know has the freedom to at least apply for work. And of course it sounds like Jake and Cassie started dating right around the time you found out about your dad, so that seems to be a bit weird timing."

"I'm not really interested in dating, Liss."

She shrugged. "You used to be. In sixth grade, you had a crush of that one boy. who was it?"

I couldn't help but smile at the long-forgotten memory. "Oh, that was… God, let me think… Justin something or other. I don't know, I'd have to get the yearbook to remember his last name."

"Oh, yeah, I remember him. He was cute. Didn't you cry when he moved?"

"Shut up," I said, pushing her on the couch. "I was twelve, Liss. Then I ended up with the Big Sister Stipend."

"Well how did you get into this babysitting mess in the first place?" she asked.

I shrugged. I knew the answer. There was a story there, a story I wanted to tell, even, but I was so used to keeping it to myself.

"I took on the babysitting job so I wouldn't have to go on dates," I said.

"Wait, what?"

Deep breath, Rachel. Deep breath. "I, uh, I started watching my sisters right after I quit the gymnastics team. And something happened, and I didn't ever want to be out on a date. So I told my parents I'd do the babysitting job and that way anytime a boy asked, I could tell him I was busy."

Her expression changed. The playfulness was replaced with a questioning concern. "You never told me why you quit gymnastics."

I nodded. I took another deep breath. I didn't look at her. I couldn't tell this story and look at Melissa. I just couldn't. So I fixated on the can of soda on the coffee table and began the story I had painstakingly kept to myself for almost four years.

‹›


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-Two**

* * *

 **Almost Four Years Ago…**

* * *

I was twelve.

You remember what I was like at twelve. If you passed me on the street, you'd think I was older. I was always tall for my age, and I was over five foot then. I started to fill out by ten. I remember you hated it that I always had boys following me around since fourth grade. People always thought I was older than I was.

But I was only twelve. I have to emphasize that part.

It wasn't that late when I got out of gymnastics, maybe four in the afternoon,but the sky was dark when I stepped out. A thunderstorm threatened, iron-grey clouds menacing above. It was brisk as the wind picked up. I still don't like thunderstorms.

The youth center, as you know, was at one end of a larger shopping complex. Mom was taking me shopping after gymnastics and she told me to meet her at Justice, on the other side of the plaza. I loved clothes at Justice at the time, and I remember being excited because I needed to go bra shopping. It was one of the first 'big girl' shopping trips I'd ever had.

"Hey, baby" I heard from behind me. I turned and saw him. I can't describe him. Not that I don't remember what he looked like, I do. I've seen his face so many times afterward in nightmares, I'm never going to forget his face. But I can't say it out loud. He looked like the Boogeyman, if that helps. It's what he became. But he wouldn't have stood out in a crowd. Not even a little bit. There was nothing about him that made him look like a dangerous predator except for the tone in his voice."You need a ride, princess?"

Any seventh-grader could pick up the double entendre. I knew he wasn't talking about his car. "No," I said firmly, the quiver of fear rising in my chest. "I'm not going far."

I felt very exposed. I was wearing denim capris over my gymnastics leotard. I grew up on a beach. I lived in bikinis, leotards, and skirts. But I felt naked as he stared at me. My skin crawled.

"Oh, c'mon, baby, don't be stuck up," he hissed. "Come on, I'll give you a quick ride."

I ignored him. I turned and kept walking. He drove on past. I remember the red glow of the tail lights. I thought he was a creep, a pervert. But I didn't give him a second thought. I didn't follow the car when he went by. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had. I wonder about a lot of it. I wonder what would have happened if I had gone into PetSmart and called my mom.

I walked for about another three or four minutes. Not long. Past the PetSmart, past the pharmacy and the pizzaria.

He picked me up. I felt my shoes leave the asphalt before I realized what was happening. It was a shopping center in the middle of the afternoon, and somehow the stars aligned just his way. There was no one anywhere when he grabbed me off the sidewalk. How many moments do you think a shopping center is ever really vacant? Just for a few seconds here and there, I guess.

I struggled in vain desperation. I screamed, but he clamped his hand over my mouth. I clenched my jaw hard. I felt him wince, tasted his blood in my mouth, but he didn't let me go. He squeezed me hard, till my ribs hurt.

I knew without question that he was going to rape me. I had barely processed what was happening, but I somehow knew what was going to happen. I wasn't quite thirteen and I was about to become a rape statistic.

That's how I thought about it too. A statistic, a number. In health class, that's how they phrased it. One in five girls, that's what they told us. But I didn't have any framework for what that actually meant. They don't tell you in sixth grade what it means to be one of those girls, what it takes away from you. I knew the word for what was happening, but that didn't make me aware.

I didn't know what it meant.

He carried me to his car. He dropped me in the backseat hard and I hit my head on the other door. But all I felt were his hands on my body. He was groping me through my leotard, fondling me. I balled my fists, hitting him over and over, peppering his back with my ineffectual barrage, but nothing I could do could get him off of me. I wasn't strong enough, wasn't big enough, and I just couldn't hurt him enough to get him to stop.

I stared at the dome light of the car, desperately trying to believe I was somewhere else. That a stranger wasn't on top of me. His hand slipped inside my leotard, touching my bare chest. I had barely developed breasts yet, and a man was touching them, touching me , without permission.

He eventually moved to undo his pants. To this day, I can't handle the sound of a belt being undone. But while he had his hands busy, I saw an opening. I tried opening the door behind my head, and it swung open.

I fell backwards through the sudden space, my head less than a foot from the asphalt surface of the parking lot. He grabbed me by the ankle and tried to pull me back into the car. With my other leg, I kicked him as hard as I could. I was a lot of leg, even at that age. And by sheer luck, the heel of my foot hit him right in the Adam's apple. He gasped breathlessly and I ran. I ran into the parking lot.

I heard a sound behind me, but I didn't stop. I didn't look behind me. It wasn't till I was soaked through that I even realised it was raining. And it wasn't till I tripped and scraped my knees that I realized he wasn't behind me. I dared to catch my breath. I felt the air on my chest and I adjusted my leotard. I looked behind me and saw the car accident a hundred feet behind me. Not a big accident, but the asshole had thrown the car in reverse - to chase me - and he hadn't seen the pickup truck coming. I'd heard it, but I hadn't registered the intensity of the sound over the pulse in my ears.

That fender-bender probably saved my life.

Somehow, through all of it, I'd kept my gym bag. He'd never tried to take it from me, it had just ended up around me, when he picked me up. Then it had been under my back in the car. If I'd lost it, things would have gone differently. With shaking hands, I found my phone and ran into the nearest store.

It was a Rite-Aid.

I'd bitten my lip, my knees were shredded, and I was soaked. I remember the cashier there. She ran up to me immediately, and she got me cleaned up. There was a first aid kit behind the counter, and all I remember while I called my mom was that cashier dabbing gauze on my knees while some old man who was waiting in line for the register stared at me and smiled.

Mom was there a few minutes later. I told her a car had cut me off in the parking lot and I'd tripped. I didn't ever tell her what had happened. She thanked the cashier and I remember that old man bought me a Snickers bar. He told me to watch for cars as he walked out the door.

We skipped bra shopping that day. I don't think I could have gotten through that after what happened. We just went home.

The guy was on the news that night. Not because he'd grabbed a young girl, but because that car he'd wrecked in the parking lot had been stolen. And he was out on parole. As far as I know, he's still in jail.

I quit gymnastics the next day. Our coach never pushed me for a real answer when I told her I was done. I just told her it wasn't for me and she seemed to accept that. I was getting tall for it anyway, and I was only ever so-so. It wasn't a hard sell that I just wasn't cut out for it.

There were about two or three days where I didn't really talk to anyone. My mom chalked it up to adolescent hormones and losing the gymnastics team. I never told her I quit. She just thought I scrubbed out. I don't remember anything for almost a week after it happened. I remember so many details about that day, and yet others are so inconsequential. I don't know why that is. I guess because I only kept the things I thought would really matter, but some of the things I remember seem so useless. Things I wish I could see aren't there. And while I know I went to school, and I know I talked to fiends, none of that really clicked. But I went through the motions on autopilot and if anyone noticed I was off, they didn't say anything about it.

And when I had the option of becoming the nanny for my little sisters, I didn't think twice. It was a reason to stay home after school. It was a reason to not be by myself, and I was the only sixth grader with a paying job.

And that's all there is to tell, really.

* * *

 **Present Day**

* * *

Melissa didn't say anything when I was done talking. I don't know what I expected. I didn't even know how I felt after telling it. Ashamed, maybe. There was the embarrassment factor to the whole thing, which was a big part of why I'd never talked about it. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to feel better or not. I don't think that I did. I didn't regret telling Melissa, and I was proud of myself for finally telling someone, but I was still as sad and tired as I had been. Really the only thing that made me feel any better at all is that we weren't talking about my mother at the moment.

I wiped the tears from my eyes. It hadn't taken that long to tell her the story.

She was crying too. Not sobbing, just tears. "You never told anyone?"

I shook my head. "No. Only you, just now."

"How?" she asked. "How could you keep that in for so long?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. It just happened that way."

"How does a secret like that just happen, Rachel?"

"Melissa, after... After it happened, I was numb for like two days. By the time I had enough wherewithal to really know how fucked up that whole thing was, I was just past wanting to ever think about it. It was days later so I didn't think I could go to the cops about it, and he was in jail by then, anyway. I didn't even think what he did was a crime, Liss."

"Rachel, that's a sexual assault."

"Yes, Liss, I know that now . But at the time…" I sighed. I stood up and paced for a bit. I don't know why, I just couldn't sit still at that point. "I didn't know what to do. I was raised by a lawyer, so in my head, I figure I'm supposed to go to the cops. But I didn't do that."

Melissa leaned on the couch, her face contorted with worry and confusion. She wanted to ask. I knew she did. But she didn't. She just patiently waited for me to continue. She wasn't going to push. I knew that much. If this was as far as I wanted to go…

"I went through a whole CSI checklist," I said. "I didn't have semen stains for the cops to analyze, I didn't have a license plate number, and all I knew for certain at the time was that I hadn't been raped. I didn't know what to do about it. He didn't take my shorts off, I never saw his penis. All he did was touch my chest and I didn't want to have to go to the police station and tell that to grown-ups. Especially not grown-ups that knew my mom. It's like I rationalized it to the point that it didn't matter. By the time I knew how big a deal it really was, I just didn't want to think about it anymore. I took up Mom and Dad on babysitting, I didn't ever go back to that youth center, and I didn't really go anywhere by myself till I took up lacrosse in eighth grade."

"I can see why you didn't want to report it," Melissa said after an uncomfortable silence, "but how did you not tell your mom? Or your aunt?"

I shrugged again. "Like I said, I thought if Mom ever found out, she'd make me report it. And I didn't know how to explain to her that I just couldn't do that. It just wasn't in me. As far as my aunt, I didn't know if I could tell her anything she couldn't tell her sister. I didn't want her to have to hold my secret. If she was just a therapist, maybe I could have told her. But she's my aunt, I see her all the time, and I wanted to just be her niece. I didn't want her to see me as a client. Or a victim. I didn't…" I sighed, the realization just dawning on me as to the real reason I'd kept it secret for so long. "I didn't want anyone to treat me any different."

Melissa and I sat in silence for what felt like a minute or more before she spoke. "You seriously never even told Cassie?" she asked, all of her normal energy returned.

I smiled. I'd told her all the things I'd never told anyone. Everything I could tell her. All the family drama I'd needed to vent, and the childhood trauma I hadn't expected to piggyback off of it. I'd known if I opened up any of it, all of it would come out. She'd heard the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

And Melissa didn't treat me any differently.

I was still upset, still a little numb. I hadn't let myself really think about that afternoon in a long time. I knew I was lucky. I didn't like thunderstorms, and there were noises and smells that made my pulse quicken. But beyond those handful of triggers, I didn't suffer anxiety or PTSD. I think I was just young enough, just ignorant enough, that I hadn't been able to process it into the scar it should have been. But I was lucky to have a friend like Melissa. I was sure she still wanted to cry, but she gave me that smile because she knew I needed it.

That made it impossible not to smile back, no matter how numb I felt on the inside.

"Are you really that jealous, Liss? No, I haven't told Cassie."

"I'll be honest," she said. "I don't really know what else to say to that. I mean, shit, I'm worried that my parents are just kinda checked out lately, but… Jesus, Rachel. I have no words for how fucked up that is."

I sighed. "Yeah, I know. But your parents… look, I'm going through some shit, and I appreciate you being here for me. You have no idea what it means to me. But I know you're going through some stuff, too. You can always talk about it with me."

Part of the reason I'd been avoiding her had been because of her parents. We had barely survived our only mission with Elfangor, and both the slugs inhabiting the Chapmans had survived. It was an angle I'd yet to bring up with my fellow Animorphs. We didn't even know how much damage our one and only attack had even done. Elfangor had destroyed or damaged about a dozen tanks, killing thousands of Yeerk slugs. I knew the estimate Visser Three had spat at us. Seventeen thousand, give or take. But they were operating undetected under Silicon Valley. Santa Clara County alone was home to nearly two million people. The Bay Area, to eight million. To keep a base like theirs secret, a fuckton of people had to be in on the alien conspiracy. So it was entirely possible, given the surrounding population, that seventeen thousand wouldn't result in much of a loss.

After Elfangor, I'd been worried Jake had implicated Chapman in a bad way. There was no getting around it. I knew we had. I'd been the one to steal the clearance card. I was certain something terrible was going to happen to Mr. Chapman and it would be our fault. But as far as I could tell, nothing came of it.

Granted, we did help set off a series of bombs that night, so I guess there was just no evidence after the fact to point the Yeerks at Chapman. But even if nothing came back on her dad, our mission had only been so successful. It hadn't made a difference to Melissa.

Her parents were still Controllers.

She shrugged. "No, my stuff is nothing. We're talking about this, and I don't want-"

"Oh, please, Liss," I interrupted. "Please, give me something else to talk about. I need a palate-cleanser after all that." She didn't know it, and she never would, but the guilt that I could do nothing to help at this point was biting. I couldn't tell her, but I needed to hear her talk about her parents. I knew exactly what was wrong with them and couldn't tell her. So any support I could give for that… I had to be there for her, too.

She smiled weakly, suddenly unsure what to say. "Honestly, I still don't even know what it is. The part that drives me up the wall is that I feel like I'm going crazy. One day, they'll be just how I remember them, the next, my dad is on the phone in the basement screaming at a contractor. It's just... not like him, y'know? He deals with a few hundred teenagers and who knows how many teachers and over-concerned parents in a day. It's not like him to lose his cool. And Mom. She's not shouting, but it's almost like she's going senile. I told her I lost my tablet the other day, the purple one I got for my birthday, and it's like she didn't know what I was talking about. Or she couldn't decide if she should be angry or not. My biggest fear is that there's something important they're not telling me."

I arched an eyebrow at that. "Like what?" I knew there was no way in a million years she'd guess they were, in fact, host bodies to brain-stealing alien slugs, but I was curious what she thought might be going on.

Melissa shrugged. "I don't know, honestly. I actually hate to even say it after what you told me about your dad, but I did consider that maybe one of them or both might be cheating on the other, but you know my parents. That just didn't add up. That didn't leave much."

"What else is left?"

She counted them off on her fingers. "Oh, lots of things. They could be having midlife crises, perhaps there are some kind of massive debts I don't know about, maybe addiction, maybe they're hiding the fact that I'm adopted. Who knows?"

I stared at her flatly. She had red hair, which neither of her parents had, but red hair is recessive anyway. I think. And Chapman's going bald and grey, so maybe he'd had red hair when he was younger? "You're not adopted, right?"

She laughed. "Not unless they tell me I am, no. But I think it's either that or… the other thing."

I winced. "There's another thing?"

She sighed. "The only other thing I could think of that would make my parents this weird and play so much havoc with their schedules was if one of them was terminally ill and they didn't want to tell me."

Ouch. Damn, Melissa. "Ooh," I hissed through my teeth, "you don't really think that's it, do you?"

She shook her head. "No, I don't. Neither Mom or Dad looks sick, anyway. Neither is suddenly losing weight, no changes in our diet, and if either of them were sick, I don't think the other could keep it together. Not for this long."

Another sigh. "You're really taking this seriously, aren't you?"

I saw the tears flowing again. She sniffled. "I just can't figure it out. I don't know why they're so different."

I don't know how or why, but I suddenly felt that I needed to do some damage control. I might not be able to tell her about the Yeerks, but maybe, just maybe, I could help with the spill-over. The only problem was that I knew I was going to have to lie to her. Not just the lies of omission, but really lie to her. And after all the honestly I'd spilled all over her, that made me feel cheap.

"I think, maybe, you're making this more of an issue than it really is." I felt sick even spitting up the words.

She wiped her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"It could just be that you grew up," I said. "I'll throw a giant disclaimer sticker on here; I could totally just be projecting my shit onto your shit. Feel free to tell me to shove it. But working childcare the last three years, I can't wait for Jordan and Sara to be old enough to not need me. I mean, Jordan is almost there now. She has her own things, her own interests. She's young enough that she'll still play with Sara, but old enough that she likes her independence."

Melissa seemed to consider that. Then she nodded. "So you're saying it might not be a bad thing. I'm a big girl now and they have their own lives and expect me to have mine?"

The knot in my stomach twisted. I didn't like screwing with her like this. I felt like the lowest form of scum trying to spin it that the Yeerk apathy was just some form of parenting she didn't recognize. Then again, the way her Controller parents acted wasn't that different from how my mother reacted.

That made me wonder. Ugh, damn it. Like I didn't have enough questions in my head.

"I guess I can see that," Melissa said. "I know Dad's been having his issues renovating the rec room. Gone through two different contractors now. And Mom has been more interested in writing that novel she's always wanted to write." She laughed. "She doesn't seem to be getting anywhere with it, but she gets really mad if I bother her while she's in the study."

I nodded. "You have no idea the things I might get up to if I don't have to watch my sisters going forward. Neither do I, mind you. It's been sisters and lacrosse, sisters and lacrosse. Fuck, I'm so used to having Jordan and Sara… I may even develop a social life."

"Yeah," she said, the ghost of fun creeping into that smile, "or a boyfriend."

"Ugh, as if. I'm looking for work, not dates."

She suddenly laughed at that. "So you really did spend the last three years babysitting your sisters just because you're afraid of dating?"

I felt my cheeks go warm. "I'm not afraid of dating. I never said that."

"Uh huh," she said in that infuriating whatever-you-say tone. "You've been spending a lot of time with Tobias and Marco lately. Have your eye on one of them?"

"Ugh, you're such a girl. God. I wouldn't date Marco unless I was trying to sell his kidneys on the black market."

"Oh," she said, knowingly, "so you're into Tobias. I can see that. He is kinda cute."

I tossed a throw pillow at her. "I didn't say that , either! Speaking of, is there something going on between you and Marco?"

Her demeanor changed like I'd thrown a switch. She was instantly the picture of a teen gossip girl. "Why? Did he say something?"

I dropped my face into my hands. "Ahh, no, Melissa, not Marco."

"Hey, what's wrong with Marco?"

"The things, honey. So many of the things."

She laughed. "You just hate him out of habit now, don't you?

I shrugged again. "Maybe. There were times when Tom would treat me… I don't know how to say this any better, but he'd treat me like a girl . I mean, he doesn't do it now, but when we were younger, he kinda did the no-girls-allowed thing. Jake never did, so I liked hanging out with him. We read comics together, played superheroes together, video games; all that stuff that Tom told me wasn't for girls, I did with Jake. And Marco was always this tagalong kid when Jake and I were playing. He still bugs me, sometimes. Especially if he starts dating my best friend."

"You really think he's interested?" she asked, suddenly shy.

"Yes, Melissa, I think he likes you. He knows you're vegan, he said he'd be your reference at the movie theater, and I remember him buying you food a number of times. Marco doesn't offer to pay lightly." I didn't want to tell her money was tight for the boy, but I didn't want him to sound cheap either. I have no idea if I succeeded in putting it delicately or not. I'm not known for my aplomb, after all.

She seemed to consider that information carefully. She didn't say anything, and I don't know what I said exactly, but I knew we were very done talking about Marco. Instead she threw another bag of popcorn into the microwave. The smell of butter filled the room. I'd had enough pizza, but it's hard to smell food and not be hungry. She sat back down with a big bowl and handed me an ice cold Dr. Pepper.

"C'mon," she said, cracking open her soda, "let's watch some fucking vampires."


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-Three**

* * *

I will say that while I'm not really an anime kind of girl, I did honestly enjoy _Hellsing Ultimate_. It followed the _Dracula_ source material fairly closely, actually more than I would have expected.

I liked that.

The character of Dracula has been reimagined so many times over the last hundred and fifty years. And each adaptation has their own take, or their own angle. For example, in the original Bram Stoker novel, Dracula goes out and about in daylight. The whole thing about vampires hating sunlight actually comes from the old black and white _Nosferatu_ with Max Schreck as Count Orlok. We watched it in English Lit as part of our lesson on the nature of copyright and transformative works. See, the people that made that movie classic didn't actually have the legal rights to do it, which is why they changed all the character names. Even so, they were still successfully sued by the Stoker estate, but the idea that sunlight is lethal to vampires persisted ever since.

The vampire genre has undergone other transformations since then. Some imagine them more tragically than others, owing in large part to Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire . I think vampirism is supposed to be darkly seductive, and I do highly recommend that book. But once the idea of humanization took root, it eventually took vampires to the point of harmlessness. Twilight sucks and it more or less killed the whole vampire genre. My sisters made me watch the Disney movie My Babysitter's a Vampire over Halloween, so that's kinda telling of how scary we see them now. The same is gradually starting to happen to the zombie brand. Warm Bodies is a fucking rom-com, after all. If you want to watch a really weird movie, though, check out Fido . It's fucked up.

But I liked that they left Dracula - called Alucard in the series - as a real monster. He was a good guy in the series, sorta, but still a monster. An antihero. But he was a well-executed homage to Dracula , not a caricature.

We were halfway through the third episode when my phone rang. It was Jake.

Melissa seemed a little sad that she had to pause, and honestly I'd been really getting into it, too, but she knew I had family drama that hadn't gone away in just two hours.

"Are you okay?" he asked. Jake's first priority in any situation always seems to be a simple status check. It was kinda sweet.

"Yeah, I think so," I said with a groan. "I basically told her she's a terrible mother, so this isn't going to just blow over."

He was silent for a bit, no doubt trying to piece together in his mind how this plan was going to work if I was grounded. I didn't really have an answer for that, so I was relieved he didn't ask. "Mom said to tell you that you're fine to stay over. She told me to tell you that she's very proud of you."

I blinked. "What?"

Jake laughed. "Mom said Aunt Nikki was overdue for a wakeup call. She's on your side in this, and obviously I am too. I know this is going to make tonight a little more challenging, but I'm with you. 'Kay, cuz?"

I smiled. "Yeah, thanks, Jake."

"No problem. I'll be there in about an hour or so. Say hi to Melissa for me."

"Yeah, will do."

I hung up the phone and looked at Melissa. She seemed torn between being hurt and being curious.

"You're not staying the night, are you?"

I shook my head. "No, Jake's going to be here around one or so. I'd stay if I could, Liss, I really would, but…" I sighed. I'd made her into a way-station and I knew that wasn't fair to her.

She smiled anyway. "It's okay, I understand."

I made a mental note that I needed to be a better friend to her than I had been. It had only been about three weeks since that ship had crashed in the woods, and I had seen her any number of times in that period, so it's not like I'd lost touch. But I knew routines were easy enough to settle into. I'd blown her off because my life had gotten in the way. And that was only okay till it wasn't. It was like me and my mom. I don't think she set out with any malicious intent. But I took responsibilities off her plate and I think over time she simply forgot how much of my shit wasn't supposed to be mine. And I didn't want Melissa and I to drift to a point that we lost our ability to lean on each other.

I shook my head again. "It's not okay, sweetie. You're a good friend and I put you in the middle of shit. If I didn't have so much damage control to do in the morning, I'd stay."

She gave me a hug. Just boom, hug. That was just Melissa in a nutshell. She was happy. Affectionate. Fun. It's what she put out into the world. And she didn't deserve any of this shit. Not my drama, not what was going on with her parents. All I could do was hug her back.

"I love you, Liss."

"Yeah, I guess I kinda like you, too," she said with a laugh.

We finished the third episode of Hellsing Ultimate and another whole bowl of popcorn before Jake arrived. Melissa was getting tired by then anyway, and if Jake hadn't been there to pick me up, I probably would have gone to bed myself.

I grabbed my bag, gave Melissa another hug, and said my goodbyes.

In the car, the damage control started.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked. He didn't even turn the ignition. Jake was an odd mix of tenacity and something else. He's sharp, perceptive, and while he's not book smart like Marco, he's not dumb. But what I love about Jake is how he always seems to have a sense of tact. He didn't demand a play-by-play. Yeah, I had to expect he actually didn't want to hear all the details, but he knew I'd likely gone through it with Melissa. He didn't push. He let me call the shots as far as that went.

Just like he didn't make an issue with Tobias in the woods.

"No," I said. "I don't want to shut you out or anything, but I don't want to get into it again. I just calmed down and if I go over it again…"

He nodded. "I understand. You know my concerns, right?"

"Am I still going? Yeah, Jake, I'm going."

He looked at me for a moment, maybe wondering if I was holding out on him. But he started the car. Five minutes later, I knew he wasn't taking me to his house.

"Are we-?" I asked as he turned onto Cabrillo.

"Yes," he said simply.

There was only one reason to drive on Cabrillo Highway this late at night. We were driving to Elfangor's. We parked on the access road. It was illegal, but the dark SUV wasn't easily visible from the street and we were hopefully going to take less than an hour and a half to do this. It felt weird to walk in the woods at night. The weird thing isn't that I was doing it - this was becoming fairly normal for me. No, the thing that made it weird is that I was dressed and wearing shoes. I usually had feathers when coming here, and that's how fucked up my normal had become. More so because I actually missed the feathers. A t-shirt and yoga pants was comfy enough for watching anime, but it was a little brisk for hiking.

The moon was still nearly full - thank God - and I had to remind myself that our moonlight adventure at the Wharf and subsequent escapade at the Aquarium had only been yesterday.

God, it was only Tuesday. Actually, I'd thought it was Monday, just because that's when I'd expected to do the swimming lessons. I'd been so busy with life that I'd forgotten what day it was. I guess with no school, that's easy enough to do. Between my sisters, moving Tom out, and the Aquarium, not to mention our late-night meetings with Aximili, everything had started to blend together. From Friday at the beach till today, it had only been five days.

The last time we'd come here by foot, it had been right after Elfangor died, and while that wasn't something I really wanted to think about, it was hard to keep it out of my head. Harder because Jake was oddly quiet. I could have pushed him, maybe, but I didn't want to talk about my personal drama and I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to talk about. I could tell him I bought wetsuits. I could tell him about Cabrera's. But none of that seemed that important.

And navigating the underbrush amid the trees by moonlight took surprising mental effort. So that, too, made conversation impractical.

It took about ten minutes of arduous walking, but soon I saw the amber flicker of the familiar fire ring. Everyone was there when Jake and I emerged from the woods and I think we scared the shit out of the three teenagers who had expected birds.

"Christ!" Marco blurted. "You could have warned us that you guys would be traipsing through the woods at night."

Jake laughed, though the mirth seemed hollow. "Yeah, but where would the fun be in that?"

"So what's going on?" Cassie asked.

I felt heat in my face. "Does everyone know?" I asked.

Cassie shook her head. "We know that you had a family issue. That's all Jake told us."

I sighed. I didn't want to recap my whole night. But that said, if I was going to be grounded, well, that was going to be an issue. "I asked Mom for a few days off from my sisters. Some things were said. Shit hit the fan and I spent the last few hours at Melissa's."

"Are you grounded?" Marco asked.

I shrugged. "I've got no clue. Doesn't matter, I'm going anyway."

Cassie gave me an odd look, and Marco looked like he was about to say something, but Jake stopped him. "Look, we're going to have to be quick about this. We can talk about other things later, but let's stay on-mission for now. Okay?"

All of us nodded.

I took a seat on the log next to Cassie and felt the heat of the fire. It was a little chilly at night still. It wouldn't be till later in June that we'd have warm nights.

Jake didn't sit. Instead, he continued. "This is it, guys," he said. "I am off Friday through Tuesday. It wasn't easy, but I talked to my manager, I had to call in a few favors to trade shifts, but Friday, we're doing this. I got the GPS tracker today, I heard Rachel bought the swimsuits, and so all we need is the whale morph and we're good to go with the cargo ship."

There was a long silence. We'd known this was coming, but having this final deadline, that suddenly made it much more real than it had been. This was happening. In two days, we were leaving.

Cassie was the first to speak. "What about the whale?" she asked.

Jake shrugged. "Look, we have a five-day window here. That gives us three days to find a sperm whale in the Farallons. We can cover a lot of ground - er, ocean - as albatrosses, so hopefully it works out."

I frowned at that. "Hopefully? Aren't we putting a lot of faith in this plan? What happens if we don't find a whale in three days?"

"Then the plan changes," Jake said.

"We have a backup plan?" Cassie asked.

"Look, we didn't really talk about this," Marco said. "And I pointed this out to Jake, but we just kinda naturally assumed this was a five-person plan. Buddy system, safety in numbers, that whole schtick. But that means we placed an arbitrary constraint on this mission."

"Wait, are you saying what I think you're saying?" Cassie asked.

"If it comes to it," Tobias said, "Marco and I will get Aximili ourselves. We can spend the extra two days at the islands. Expands our window. Then Marco and I would go the next time he has two consecutive days off."

All that drama with my parents for five days off, and there was a possibility that I wouldn't even go on the real mission. That technically, I didn't have to go. I felt emotions I don't even have names for. I felt like I may have stirred up a lot of drama for no real reason.

"That's a worst-case scenario," Jake said. "We can fly more than a hundred miles in each morph window, and we'll have an aerial perspective. Our odds of finding a sperm whale are significantly better than a four-hour whale tour. So right now, the plan is the whale and the ship, all together."

We spent the next fifteen minutes going over some details. Jake, Marco, and Cassie all had hiking and camping equipment. Enough to make up for the fact that Tobias and I didn't. Cassie and I would have our own tent, of course, and the boys would have theirs. We went over portable phone batteries, food options, and so on. The SUV would be packed Thursday night, and Jake would pick us all up on Friday morning. The rest of the details could be ironed out over the next forty-eight hours.

So that brought us to the main event, so to speak. Our final conversation with Aximili.

Tobias went through his now-familiar comm array routine and it wasn't long before the psychic hologram of Aximili flickered to life. He looked a little harassed, though I couldn't say for sure. I'm not an expert on Andalites, not by any means, but he looked like he hadn't slept in some time.

"Aximili," Jake said. "How are you doing?"

The Andalite seemed to deflate somewhat. ‹Given my circumstances, I feel I am doing as well as could be expected.›

"You look like you could use a rest," Tobias said.

Aximili almost seemed to laugh. Almost. ‹Yes, I am fairly exhausted. While Elfangor's data logs allowed me to override most of the security protocols, I have limited power, so several doors had to be opened manually.›

Jake recapped what he'd told us. Specifically that we'd hopefully be reaching him in the next seven days. We had done all the prep work we could do. This was the working window that we could be out without arousing suspicion.

Granted, I think Aximili thought we were being cautious of Yeerk suspicion. It seemed like explaining we had our own lives and parents that didn't know what we were doing might not inspire him with much confidence. Five teenagers ready to rescue him - when we could fit it into our personal lives. I mean, obviously Jake and Marco wanted to still be employed after this mission, but it'd be hard to tell that to him and not make him seem like a secondary priority.

"Do you have the specs for those launch bay doors?" Marco asked.

Aximili's expression changed suddenly. Almost like he was trying to think how to explain it to us. He didn't know feet or meters, and we didn't know Andalite units.

He didn't tell us anything about the dome ship. He showed us, instead.

When we had first rescued Elfangor, after he morphed from his injuries, we had all of us hidden in Cassie's barn while Yeerk ships cruised over looking for him. They had vaporized his ship, not more than a few dozen yards up the hill from the comm array around which we were now all gathered. But anyway, in the barn, Elfangor had shown us things, some kind of telepathic memory storage or something. He used it to explain the Yeerks, how the slugs entered into a host and attached to the brain. We didn't really understand exactly how telepathic Andalites really were, but the point here is that Aximili wasn't limited to speech. He could send pictures, knowledge, or memories.

Jake had done it once. He'd morphed Elfangor to do it, and he'd shared with us the memory of his trip to the Yeerk pool. So this wasn't the first time my brain had a fit like this. There are some things you can't explain with just words. Like you can't describe the color red to a blind person. Or you can't explain love to anyone that has never felt it. The best I can put it is to steal a line from a Futurama rerun: a headache with pictures. I imagine it's what epilepsy feels like. Not that I would know, but the human brain being different than the Andalite brain, there was some appreciable feedback as we absorbed the information.

We didn't know much about the ship. Elfangor said it had taken some damage, and while the dome was intact, no repairs could be made underwater. But I'd had no clue what the ship looked like. The name "Dome Ship" conjures a mental picture of something along the lines of a gigantic Big Gulp lid, but expectations being what they are, the reality was a bit of a surprise. It actually seemed more mushroom-shaped.

The ship seemed to be comprised of three main sections. There was the dome that gave it it's name, a somewhat squat, vase-shaped stalk, and a base that consisted of six… legs? They looked something like over-stylized crab legs - not like a real crab leg, but like a Pokémon caricature of a crab leg - arranged hexagonally at the base of the central stalk.

The mushroom cap was almost like a hamburger shape, but very broad and shallow, not like hemisphere. That, I realized, would be so much wasted volume. The actual dome looked like an unfathomably large contact lens made of a transparent substance not unlike glass or acrylic. But I didn't need Marco to tell me that such materials wouldn't tolerate the vacuum pressure of space. It covered a sort of disk - the bottom bun of the burger - that I somehow knew was the living quarters for the ship. It had structural elements, and I have no clue how to describe the alien architecture outside that it looked like purple and red steel. Tobias said it looked to have design features in common with football stadiums. Marco compared it to the Galra ships in the Netflix Voltron reboot. And honestly both of them were correct.

Within the dome was a series of five concentric rings or sections. The highest level was at the outside, just like a stadium. But instead of each section only being wide enough for a row of seats, each level was maybe fifty yards wide. In the center of the dome, rather than a flat open space of a stadium, there was instead a massive cylindrical tower, almost like a skyscraper.

Two things took my breath away. The first was the sheer scale. The size of it was hard to tell. It's like how you know how far it is from your house to your school...but you don't ever actually take the time to find the actual distance in feet. If I had to guess, though, I'd say the ship was more than half a mile across. Easily bigger than an aircraft carrier.

The second - and more visually stunning feature - was that it was a goddamn alien botanical garden. Amid all the bizarre, beautifully-inhuman Andalite architecture was a wonderish grassland beyond anything imaginable. There were gorgeous trees of bright magenta, standing taller than my house, and shaped - and I'm not kidding - almost exactly like asparagus stalks. The grass looked similar to grass of Earth, except it was orange and gold, with something resembling scarlet wheat scattered throughout. And it was moving as though there somehow was wind within the dome. It seemed more likely that the Andalite grass was simply moving, like some kind of coral or something. Sapphire blue moss grew over deliberately landscaped rock features. A purple, tendril-like form of ivy crawled up the vertical walls.

Cables, tubes, light fixtures, all the essentials were there like you'd expect. There were myriad computer screens - most of them the same psychic-projection type we were ourselves experiencing - dotted all over the place. It was a mix of the pinnacle of their technology and the natural world of their home planet. Their ship was a both a floating city in space and an alien reconstruction of the hanging gardens of Babylon.

I watched as the dome, the mushroom cap, separated from the stalk part. I realized we were seeing some kind of simulation. He was showing us what had happened to him, the Andalite equivalent of black box flight recorder data. And interspersed with this visual information was a sense of knowledge that was clearly not my own, things that Aximili wanted us to understand. The stalk part was more maneuverable and tactically efficient without the more vulnerable dome section. In normal campaigns, they would have undocked the dome prior to engaging, but this had been an ambush attack. The stalk disappeared, no longer relevant. Or possibly destroyed. There was a slash of red light - Dracon fire - and the dome part tilted and began to tumble.

The ship had shields, weakened by the shot, but sufficiently intact that the inferno entry burn had been easily deflected. Atmospherics were one thing, wasn't really designed to land at all, mind you. But the computer had automatic emergency landing protocols. Aximili knew his emergency drills. That was the only reason he was alive. The ship was hit by a second Dracon blast, though, and that caused the dome to descend in something of a spiral pattern.

I got some flash of Aximili panicking as he tried to land the ship. I don't know if he meant for us to get that glimpse. I think he was trying to explain the orientation of the ship relative to the undersea mountain. But I felt his desperation as he struggled to land something that he had no business trying to fly. Maybe he was just trying to assure us that he had done his best to land. He didn't do too bad, really. The computer could only compensate so much, and the impact into the sea had been catastrophic on the shields. When the shields fell, the overload crippled the power. Systems failed, rebooted, failed again, and so on as he sank into the sea. The ocean slowed most of the momentum, though, and the subsequent damage of landing on the seafloor was more like a fender bender in comparison.

But the ship settled on the undersea mountain in such a way that it was tipped about fifteen or twenty degrees, and a good portion of it was firmly embedded into the ocean bedrock. I don't know what kind of material can fall through miles of atmosphere at speeds I can't even imagine and lodge into a mountain without breaking. Andalites really know how to build a spaceship, it seems.

The little animation or simulation - however you want to put it - only took about thirty seconds.

"Fucking hell," Jake said. It was, actually, the first time he had received this kind of psychic email attachment, and so he didn't do as well with it as the rest of us.

"Yeah, jackass," I said, though more sarcastically than maliciously, "it's not fun, is it?"

All of that had been in answer to Marco's question regarding the size of the door. I half-suspected that Aximili could have given us a better answer. Like all that extra was him deliberately being an ass to the humans he didn't really want to work with. Then again, it wasn't like it was useless information, either. So it was a fine line what his intent had been.

But we knew the doors were too small for a whale. They should be fine for a squid, I thought.

‹Will that information suffice for your purposes?› he asked. His expression was unreadable, and I think it took a decent amount out of him to send that experience. Not as much as it took us to receive it, but still.

"There is one other thing," Tobias said.

That seemed to surprise Aximili, but it was hard to say for sure. ‹What else would you need to know?› That definitely had an edge to it, but he could just be moody and tired. Still, I suspected there was a hint of disdain.

"Well, the next few days are going to be preparation for us. We're not going to talk to again till we actually get there, so I guess I'm curious if there's like a doorbell or anything to the ship."

‹A doorbell…› he said confused. Elfangor said that he interpreted our thoughts when we spoke rather than understood the series noises we called English. Still it seemed like that word puzzled Aximili somewhat. ‹The bay doors are equipped with thought-speech relays,› he said, as though that should have been obvious to us. ‹Simply announce your arrival and I will be notified by the ship's security protocols.›

The idea that we were going to deliberately activate security protocols of a giant alien ship didn't sound very comforting.

But there really wasn't much left to say.

We said our awkward goodbyes to Aximili and Tobias closed down the comm array. Marco helped him with the firewood, I saw Jake give Cassie a kiss.

I gave Tobias a hug he didn't really expect, but he squeezed me close. I gave Marco a similar goodbye. We weren't really the hugging type, but he'd had my back at Cabrera's and that was big for me. For his part, he seemed more embarrassed than anything else. I said my own goodbyes to Cassie and she forced me to promise to call her tomorrow to talk. I smiled, touched that she cared. I was getting a bit daunted how much I was going to have to go over my fight with my mom, but it was what it was.

Ten, fifteen minutes later, I was once again emerging from the woods. The SUV had not been towed. It didn't seem likely, and since most of this meeting had been accomplished via psychic email, it had barely taken an hour, actually. But Jake seemed genuinely relieved.

Aunt Jean was asleep when Jake and I got to his house. Jake went upstairs and got in the shower to wash away the lingering smells of popcorn and woodsmoke. We hadn't morphed tonight, so there was that.

I took my bag up to the guest bedroom and passed out.


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter Twenty-Four**

* * *

The last time I'd spent the night at Jake's had only been a few weeks ago, the night all this had began. I remember coming downstairs the next morning to find Marco making eggs and bacon, with buttered toast and coffee.

I did smell breakfast cooking, but it wasn't eggs or bacon. Uncle Steve was making his "famous" blueberry pancakes when I woke up. Uncle Steve is not a kitchen maverick, not by any stretch. He can make pasta and pancakes, and that's about it. Or so he likes to say. There was a plate waiting for me when I came downstairs to the breakfast nook.

And just like that morning, I'd apparently woken up before Jake. He wasn't in the kitchen when I came down. I poured blueberry syrup over my stack of pancakes and took a bite before answering. Uncle Steve handed me a cup of coffee.

"Jake still asleep?" I asked, after a sip.

"No, Jake's out, princess," Uncle Steve said.

That worried me. "Out where?"

"Jake volunteered to take Jordan and Sara today."

I stared at my uncle in shock. That was a huge deal for me. Jake had worked a full shift and hadn't gotten to me at Melissa's till after one in the morning. We had been out in the woods till nearly two thirty. And he'd woken up early on too-little sleep and gone to take care of my sisters. Jake really was a saint sometimes, but all I could think to say in response was simply, "Oh."

"So, apparently you laid down the law with Nicole last night?" He said it as a question. Like that's what he'd heard and he wanted me to confirm it.

I knew I was about to have a talk with my uncle. I wasn't thrilled with that idea, but I'd fallen asleep knowing it was coming and the less I did to try to weasel out of awkward moments like this, maybe the less shit I'd be in. I was going camping one way or the other. That very probably was going to cost me points in this already lopsided battle of kid versus adults. But I was doing this.

"Not exactly. I just wanted to go camping with Jake and Marco. I never get to do that stuff, because I'm always taking care of my sisters. I'd already talked to Melissa to babysit. I talked to Aunt Jean about. But when I was talking to Mom about it… She said something and I just snapped."

He nodded, listening. "Everyone has their breaking point, sweetie. What was yours? What did she say?"

I shrugged, sighing. I'd been through some embarrassing stuff with him over the years. Hell, he was my pediatrician. He knew some very personal things about me, some that even my parents didn't know. He'd held my hand while one of the female doctors of his practice performed my first pelvic exam. Things don't get much more personal or embarrassing than that.

"I told her I wanted to go camping and right of the bat she just kinda hand-waves it as not being important. She wasn't mean, you know, but it was just so arbitrarily dismissive. I felt so ignored… She said I couldn't just take off whenever I want to. That I have to learn responsibility. That was my breaking point. I never get to take off. For me to do anything, I have to call in favors with Melissa, or Cassie, or Jake, or you and Aunt Jean. And she said I was being irresponsible. Three years, I've been the designated big sister for Jordan and Sara. And she called me irresponsible. I didn't mean to go off on her, Uncle Steve."

He shook his head and took another sip of his coffee. "Parenting isn't easy, Rachel. It really isn't. I was lucky. I married Jeanie. We have a high school graduate that spent his whole senior year volunteering. Tom had the foresight, the responsibility, and the diligence that he was able to move out after high school. That's rare these days. It's harder for kids to be that secure that young. And Jake works more hours at his job than I did when I was his age. So I know a lot about the value of responsibility. Trust me, Nicole doesn't think you're irresponsible. She's proud of you, honey."

I looked at him sideways. "She has a funny way of showing it."

He laughed. "Oh, like you wear your emotions on your sleeve? That thing where you bottle everything up, where do you think you got it from?"

Damn it. That was totally my mother.

He laughed. "Look, honey, there are two things you have to know about parents in general. The first is that we always have to be reminded that you guys are about five years older than we think you are. When you go to kindergarten, we see you as the babies you're never going to be again. When you start high school and start dating, we remember you in elementary school, riding bicycles, climbing jungle gyms, coming to us with scraped knees and stickers on your homework. Each new plateau you reach, we remember where you were before it. And so it's hard for us to always see you kids the way you need us to."

I nodded, took another bite of my breakfast. "And the second thing?"

"Hell, the other part I think is just something that comes with being an adult. You already know this. We like routines. You guys go through so much change in such a short time. From the time you can tie your own shoes to the time we have to go over parallel parking is only like ten years. And the thing is, once you're in your mid-twenties, change starts to become scary. We like the status quo because it takes us a long time to build it, so it means something if we have to build it again. The kids that come into my clinic grow up, but my job doesn't. I work with the same people for years. I've practiced in the same building for years. I don't like change at work. I have the same friends for years. I don't even like half of them anymore but I'm too old to make new ones."

I ate some more breakfast and drank some more coffee. "Okay, but what does that have to do with my situation?"

"Look, I'm not trying to defend your mother here. She put a lot on you, I know she did. But what I want you to understand is that your mom just kinda forgot you weren't thirteen anymore. You're old enough now where you have things you want to be doing, and things a girl your age should be doing. Your mom got into a routine with you. She didn't mean to, but she did."

I knew that. She wasn't a bad mom. She wasn't. I knew she loved us. She could be a little hyper-organized and maybe a bit distant and tired, but that's because she was so busy. "I wish she was easier to talk to."

Uncle Steve laughed again. "Rachel, look, when it comes down to it, Nicole is scared to death of you."

"What?!" If he told me Andalites had come to the door selling timeshares on a radioactive moon orbiting a quasar, I wouldn't have found it any more surprising.

He exhaled and shook his head. "Nicole has always been worried she'd never be as good a mother as her sister. Jean helped raise your mom. Did you know that? When they were kids, your grandfather was deployed in Bosnia and your grandma was practically a single mother for about five years. So Jean got more years with your grandma, and Nicole lost out on that. And Jean is kind of a lot to live up to as far as being a mother. Your mom nearly had a full-blown anxiety attack when she realized she was going to need a nanny after her promotion. She felt like such a terrible mother. But you stepped up in a big way. You made her so proud when you volunteered to babysit. But she got complacent. Like I said, status quo. And she wasn't blind that she needed to be there more. She was just scared that she could never be as good a mother as you are a sister. You're kind of a lot to live up to, too, y'know."

I wiped tears from my eyes. "I didn't mean for this to happen."

He smiled. "God, teenagers are so dramatic. You had a fight with your mom, sweetie. You didn't kill anyone."

Actually, Uncle Dan, I sure as fuck have killed people. I've thrown human beings like rag dolls into concrete walls. I did nothing as Taxxons swarmed over the wounded. I've killed. But since I couldn't exactly tell him that, I just ate the rest of my breakfast.

"I didn't really expect Jake to take Jordan and Sara," I said, finishing my coffee.

"We weren't sure what you wanted to do. Call Jake, if you want. I'm sure he'll pick you up if you want. Or you can chill here, raid the fridge, and have a Rachel day. Whatever puts you where you need to be. Oh, and I'm sure this goes without saying, but your mom wants to talk to you tonight. She said to tell you emphatically that she will be home at six tonight, but she's not really able to just duck out of a Wednesday. Six is the earliest she can be home."

I nodded and thanked him for being there for me. He'd more than earned a hug.

"I have to go to the office, princess. I'll be home later. Call if you need anything, okay?"

I looked up at the kitchen wall clock about the sink. It wasn't even quite nine yet. Damn, it was earlier than I thought. Jake couldn't have gotten even five hours of sleep. My uncle got up and filled a travel mug with coffee and milk. I suddenly noticed the shirt he'd been wearing. I looked at him funny. "You're not going to change?"

He shook his head. "Nope. Grown up, remember. We don't change." With that, he grabbed his keys and his assorted accessories and left me all alone. My uncle, the only pediatrician I could see going to work in a Deadpool t-shirt.

It didn't take more than a few minutes before the silence in the house started to get to me. As much as I wanted to get away from my sisters every now and again, I've grown very accustomed to a certain level of background noise.

I went back into the guest room and called Jake, if for no other reason than to thank him for taking Jordan and Sara.

"Hey, finally awake, I see," he said when he answered.

"Yeah, I had breakfast with your dad," I said. "What's up?"

"Not much. I have Cassie and your sisters at the Boardwalk. Mom said to give you a day off, so you're free to do whatever."

I bit my lip. "Thanks, Jake. That means a lot to me. How… How are my sisters?" I'd tried to hold the thought at bay. I worried that they'd assume they were the problem. That I didn't want to watch them because I didn't like them.

"They're fine," Jake said. "We're waiting in line for the bumper cars. Do you want to talk to them?"

"Yeah, can I talk to Jordan?"

There were some odd background noises as he handed his phone off, then I heard my sister's voice. "Hey, Rachel."

"Hey, Jordie. Are you guys doing okay? Do you know what's going on?"

"You and Mom are fighting, huh?"

I sighed, equal measure regret and relief. "Yeah. Is Sara okay?"

"She's at the Boardwalk with Jake. Trust me, she's fine."

"You're not mad at me?" I asked.

Somehow, I could hear her shrug through the phone. "No, Rachel, we're not mad at you." She sighed, exasperated. It was cute on a ten-year-old. "At least you're not as bad as mom this morning. You dialed her up to turbo-mom, by the way."

I smiled at that. It was a weird mental image to see Mom in turbo-mode. "Okay, let me talk to Jake again."

"See?" Jake said, "They're fine. I got this. Go watch TV or something. Go for a run. Whatever you want."

And that left me all alone again.

I knew I had unread texts, but I just couldn't push myself to check them. So instead I went to the bathroom and went through the usual morning routines. I got a shower, got dressed in something more than just an oversized t-shirt, and brushed my teeth. That killed about twenty minutes, but I still didn't really know what to do.

I was basically stalling, hoping I could come up with a reason not to read what my parents had sent. But once I bit the bullet and looked, it wasn't that bad. There was a string of texts from Aunt Jean that told me I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted and that she and Uncle Steve would be there to help mediate with me and my parents if I wanted them to.

Dad had only sent a single text, but it was just a cryptic statement. The sort that without any contextual information made me wonder why he'd bother sending it. "We need to talk."

Yeah, no shit. Throwing his affair in his face had been a cheap shot. I didn't regret it, not really. He was banging Miss Franklin instead of being home. I had friends over, pizza delivered, and he'd been out cheating while I'd been tucking his daughters into bed. So as far as I was concerned, his affair was fair game. But the way I weaponized that information, used it as ammunition… I'd pissed him off. And I'd essentially threatened to tell mom about the affair, which wasn't a card I should've played. That was where the text had come from. He didn't want me to tell Mom. It had bought me last night, but that now put me on two separate fronts with my parents.

I had half-expected that my mother would have sent a string of novella-length texts, but she hadn't. She, too, had sent only one. "I'm so sorry, Rachel. For everything. Talk tonight. I love you more than the world."

That soured my mood faster than I would have thought possible. After my talk with Uncle Steve, I was really regretting last night. I was right to demand more independence, and I was right to call Mom out on how much she was dumping on me when she wasn't home. But I had been something of a bitch about the way I'd done it. I'd lost my temper and thrown salt into wounds that I didn't really need to. That's the downside to just taking it until I reached my boiling point and it made me realize that should've just talked to them before school let out for the summer.

My brief time as an Animorph had made me a bit more direct, I guess. Or my near-death experience had made me a bit more impatient with trivialities, one or the other.

I also realized that I had taken out his affair on Mom, and that really wasn't fair. I mean, okay, she's a lawyer. She's used to unfair. But still, she had taken more than her share of my ire. Dad deserved it more than she had.

I sighed, not really sure what to do. I thumbed the screen of my phone, idly considering how best to waste my time.

I could have joined Jake and Cassie at the Boardwalk. That would have been the smart, rational, responsible big sister thing to do. And maybe a day riding roller coasters wouldn't be such a bad idea. I could use the stress-relief. Then again, Jake already had a handle on that and the voice in the back of my mind told me that I only wanted to go to my sisters to appease my guilty conscious about last night. And that I just didn't know what to do without them.

I could call Melissa. We could hang out, watch a few more hours of Hellsing , be BFFs for awhile. That seemed tempting, but also boring. I didn't want to spend the day lounging and watching TV. Even though relaxing and decompression were valid uses of my time, I wasn't in the mood to sit still. And I didn't want Melissa to become my safe harbor in the storm, the friend I went to when shit got rough. I needed to wait till I was actually in the mood for real fun and not make her out to be a way-station again.

That left Marco or Tobias, and as soon as I put those names together in my head, I think the rest of my day was pegged. It was all the voice in my head needed to make the suggestion that I make the phone calls and run out for a day of petty theft. And whatever my normal moral compass may have said on any other day, I offered no resistance to that idea. Look, I was pissed, frustrated, and restless. That's not a recipe for good decision-making.

I may be a "good girl" and all, but I'm not that incorruptible.

I made the phone call to Tobias. I had very obviously woken him up. His voice was a mess of syllables. "Mmm… Rachel? What time is it?"

"It's a little before ten," I said. "I need you up. Jake has my sisters maybe we could go rob some carjackers."

"What, now?" he asked. There was a sleep-drunk slur to those two words, a hidden plea that I change my mind and let him go back to sleep.

"Yes, now."

He grumbled something and I could hear him moving in the tent, the sound of the tent material rustling, the unique sound of a sleeping bag zipper. "Alright," he said, "give me a few minutes and I'll fly over to your place."

"I should probably call Marco first." I said it without thinking, but the second the words were out of my mouth, I remembered that I hadn't told Tobias I'd invited Marco into this plan.

"Marco?" he asked. "Did you tell him about this?"

Oops.

"Uh… yes?" I said, a bit more meekly than I'd intended. "I… uh… Look, I'm sorry. I should have talked to you first, but I wasn't thinking clearly at the time."

There was a brief biting pause and then he sighed. "Okay, I'm listening."

I told him about getting groped while I was looking at wetsuits in Cabrera's. I explained that I was pissed off and Marco was telling me about his rather bleak financial status. "Are you mad?" I asked.

I heard him exhale. "Did you tell Jake or Cassie?"

"No, I'm not stupid. Just Marco."

"Then, no. It's cool. Call Marco and meet me in the woods."


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter Twenty-Five**

* * *

The flight from my house to Elfangor's camp is not a long one. The common raven can hit a speed of fifty miles an hour in level flight, so there aren't many places in Santa Cruz that aren't a short flight from my house. It had taken me longer to change into morphable clothing than it had to traverse the distance.

I'd made the call to Marco. He would be meeting me there. But to my surprise, Tobias wasn't there when I landed by the comm array.

‹Tobias?› I called out. No answer. ‹Oh, great, now what?›

With no idea how long I'd be waiting, I decided to demorph. And since I didn't really want to sit on a log in nothing but volleyball shorts and a cami top, the second thing I did was to raid the gym bag in the tent for my cutoff shorts and sneakers. I wish I'd had the foresight to leave other clothes in the duffel, maybe some socks and a better shirt, but so be it.

I had to assume that Tobias had gone to Cassie's or something. It's not like the woods offered a toilet or shower, after all. That thought of course made me wonder what exactly happened to my stomach contents when morphing. Not to be gross, but it seemed an actual puzzle to me. If Tobias woke up and had to pee, and he morphed to hawk or raven to fly to Cassie's bathroom, did he still need to go when he demorphed? I don't think I'd ever really run out of what-ifs when it came to my one and only superpower, but that was one that made me shake my head.

Sitting on a log is not that much fun after two or three minutes, and I started to get impatient quickly. I looked around the little camp for things to do, but it's not like a campsite has a ton of chores. There were no food wrappers to clear, the firewood may have been getting low, but not terribly so. At any rate, after walking through the woods at night, I wasn't about to go traipsing through the underbrush looking for sticks.

I kept looking around, hoping each movement in the branches above me was a bird landing. What made the raven such a great morph is that it's not something that really stands out much, but of course there were wild ravens everywhere and the occasional flutter of black wings seemed to taunt me.

I got up after a few minutes and just started idly pacing. I looked at the comm array for a nice stare. It had been the only way we'd interacted with Aximili and in a week, he was going to be here in person. I'd kinda teased Tobias about making this area of woods a little more cozy, but if we were going to have to hide an Andalite for the foreseeable future, that would be something to consider.

I still wasn't sure what to think about Aximili. He seemed off, and maybe that was just me, but I couldn't shake the feeling he was protecting something about the ship. It seemed like we had to coerce him into cooperation. Then again, he didn't know us. I guess I could forgive him for being cautious in regards to an unknown - the five humans that had Andalite technology. And it was hard to blame him for being moody, either. He'd looked so ragged and worn last night. He had been down there three weeks already. Days on end, all by himself, trapped in a ship that had to be getting low on air by now. And it'd be another few days before we were on that cargo ship.

He wasn't even going to hear from us again till we got there. I thought about how much he probably had to look forward to his brief interactions with the comm array, just as something to do, someone to talk to. And I realized for the first time that we had known Elfangor had died in battle for almost a whole day before we'd been able to contact him and tell him his brother's fate. One day where he had no contact from his brother. One day he spent with the ghost of hope. It made me feel guilty, like we'd lied to him by accident.

We hadn't meant to keep it from him. But there'd been the threads of real life that we had to pick up. For me and Jake, it had been Tom's graduation. For Cassie, it had been her normal clinic duties and chores. Cassie actually got grounded because she slept in the day after and apparently messed up the med schedules for a few wildlife patients. Marco had gone surfing for the first time since his mom died. The death of his mom had put him off the water, and now the death of Elfangor had pushed him back to it. And Tobias…

Tobias had never really left.

I don't know why it took me that long to see it from that perspective, but I suddenly understood that Tobias wasn't living in that tent just to hide from his uncle and his terrible family life, but also because he wanted to stay with Elfangor. Or at least linger in the memory of Elfangor. Don't get me wrong, he knew Elfangor was gone. He knew that explicitly, all of us did. Technically, we hadn't seen him die; we'd been running for our lives at the time. But none of us had delusions that he'd made it out.

The bitter side effect of Andalite telepathy was that we'd felt him die.

But I guess this was Tobias's way of handling loss, just being close to it. It was totally opposite my reaction to loss, the way I tried to push it down, swallow it like a bitter pill. But everyone has their own take, I guess. Actually, considering he'd been moved to Pittsburgh within a few weeks after his mom disappeared, the lingering made sense.

I wasn't really friends with him before. Not like Marco and Jake had been. But I wondered what it had to be like at eight and lose someone like that. Marco at least knew his mother was dead. That's a crass way of putting it, I know, but he at least had closure. Tobias didn't have that. For all he knew, his mother was alive. Somewhere, somehow, that possibility still existed. It was just as likely she was dead, and that was equally crass, but also true. The uncertainty had to be crushing.

I had unwittingly and unwillingly given myself the unbid mental image of a little lost boy, sitting at home, staring at the door, waiting for mommy to come home. Waiting for hours. Then days. It had been years now, and still he had no answers. What Aximili had experienced for a day, maybe two at the most, Tobias just lived with.

‹Incoming,› I heard Marco's voice. I looked up to see two ravens descending from the trees above.

‹Oh, Rachel, shit,› Tobias said, his tone apologetic. ‹Sorry. You been here long?›

I shrugged and threw away my thoughts. "I don't know, maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Where were you?"

‹Oh, I went to my uncle's shop,› he said. ‹I wanted to scout a bit. I thought I'd be back here before you. What, did you fly here as soon as you were off the phone?›

I nodded. "Yeah, basically. Once I was off the phone with Marco, I had nothing else to do. You came together?"

Marco laughed. ‹We caught up to each other a few miles back. Didn't know it was Tobias till a few minutes before we got here. You have any idea how many ravens there are?›

"I'm in the woods, Marco. I have a hunch."

‹Alright, well morph and let's head over to the chop shop and see if we can't find a target.›

With that rather blasé statement, we flew off to the mechanic shop. I learned Tobias's uncle's name from the sign on the building. Greg's Auto was across the river and not really far from Tobias's apartment. Honestly, it was nothing special. If you saw it from the outside, it was just your average brakes and tires mechanic shop. Maybe a bit on the older side, you might think perhaps it could use a new paint job, but given the neighborhood, it wasn't out of place. Tobias said they did do a ton of above-board work, which one, made legitimate income, and two, made it a lot harder to nail the shop for anything illegal because most of the cars that came through actually were legit customers getting routine service. Chopping stolen cars was just a side racket. It may not be most of what the shop did, but it was lucrative and brought in a ton of money. According to Tobias, depending on what they chopped, one car could easily translate into three to six grand, sometimes even more.

The shop was busy when we flew through the second-floor window. This was Tobias's uncle's office. It sat on a mezzanine above the shop below, but it wasn't really it's own floor. Still, it had its own window and that was the important thing. From the window, we went up to the ceiling and perched on the metal overhead rigging. Below, the shop was mess of noises and colors. Tools glinted in the sunlight spilling through the dirty window, the clank of metal, of off-color conversations and shop talk. I guess my expectation was something more sinister, but whether any of these guys were criminals or not, they were reasonably professional when the shop was open.

‹Okay,› I said. ‹So what are we looking for?›

‹Well, the first thing we need to do if find my uncle. If he's not here, no one is getting paid. There,› Tobias said, turning his head to an area below where a few guys were talking,

His resemblance to Tobias was noticeable, but minimal. He had the same dark blond hair, maybe the same nose. But that was it. Even tied in a ponytail, I could tell his hair was thinning and greying. His skin had the flush and deep pores of a heavy drinker, and he had a coarse, trimmed beard. Tobias was rather gangly and lean as a rabbit, but his uncle was built a bit broad, he had a beer belly and the tattooed muscular arms of a mechanic. Straight up, Tobias's uncle looked like the actor that played Théoden, King of Rohan, in The Lord of the Rings movies . Or maybe like if Santa Claus had been a biker before he took up the whole Christmas thing. He was laughing at something one of the others had said, and when he laughed, I could see a glimpse of what he was like when he was younger.

We watched as the group split up. One of the mechanics followed Tobias's uncle up the stairs the mezzanine. The mechanic didn't look much older than Tom, maybe mid-twenties, but he had a roughness to him that I knew hadn't come from simply being a few years older. A kid that grew up rough. Like Tobias probably would if he didn't get out.

Greg opened a safe next to a filing cabinet and when he turned around, he had cash in his hand. He handed it to the kid, and that kid became the center of our world. The kid was already heading down the steps when Greg spun the dial of the safe. We had to wait a few minutes for Greg to head back down to the shop level so we could fly out the window, but the kid hadn't gotten very far. For a car thief, I was a little surprised to see him walking down the street.

‹So the plan is what, just follow him, see if he hides it in the mattress or something?› Marco asked.

‹Pretty much,› Tobias said.

‹What if he puts it in the bank?› I asked.

‹Or buys drugs?› Marco asked.

‹Duncan doesn't do drugs,› Tobias said. ‹And if he did, well, we can rob drug dealers, too, right? Look, think of this as fishing. Sometimes the fish gets away. All we can do is follow the money. Maybe he'll leave it at his place, maybe he'll spend it. And if he spends it, we just head back to the shop and wait for the next guy.›

‹This is going to be tedious as hell, isn't it?› Marco grumbled.

‹Well for five, six hundred bucks, I'm willing to be a little patient,› Tobias said.

Duncan walked for about twenty minutes, about a mile from the shop, and he didn't stop anywhere along the way. No liquor stores, no banks, nothing. He ended up at an apartment complex, the kind where you know just by looking that they don't do credit background checks.

We landed on the power lines outside the building and watched him through the windows. With raven eyes, it was easy enough to keep track of him even from fifty yards away through glass. And June in Santa Clara with no air conditioning, most of the windows in the building were open.

He apparently lived in a third-floor apartment, and when he came in, he was met by a girl that couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen. She was dressed in nothing but a large, faded heavy metal t-shirt, and she was holding a baby. Duncan kissed his kid - I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl, the baby was only wearing a diaper - and then kissed his girlfriend. Or his wife. She had to have been pregnant about my age to have what appeared to be a one-year-old infant.

The apartment was small, but well kept. The furniture was secondhand, but it was clean. And when Duncan put the whole roll of cash in an old coffee can above the fridge, I knew then and there that the mission was done.

Duncan was a thief, yes. I'm not going to sugarcoat that. But he had a family, a baby. He was down on his luck, probably a high school dropout, and barely scraping by. He wasn't out jacking cars as some kind of thrill-seeking, he wasn't trying to score drugs, he was just desperate. I couldn't do it. I couldn't take cash from a guy that was living on the edge. The money from that stolen car was probably the only thing that guaranteed food in the fridge.

‹This doesn't feel kosher,› I said.

‹I have to agree,› Marco said. ‹This guy needs the money.›

Tobias sounded relieved. ‹I was hoping you guys would say that. I like Duncan. He's kind of a cool guy.›

‹Are all of the car thieves at your uncle's garage going to be like this?› Marco asked. ‹Is this a chop shop for feelgood thieves?"

Tobias laughed. ‹Oh, hell no. There are assholes there that would sell that baby if it got them a buck.›

So with that little bit of information, we went back to the shop in hopes that we could find a less sympathetic target that didn't offend our moral centers. We landed on the roof of the building next door, somewhere we could see through the second-floor office window. But of course the real world being one great long circle jerk, things didn't work out the way we wanted them to. The minutes ticked on by and we didn't see Greg make any other payments to anyone else. Eventually we ended up having to demorph and remorph on the roof.

We told stories to pass the time. Neither of them asked me to get into my family drama. Tobias told us he'd been spending more time at the library as a secondary location from his tent in the woods. And he'd used his Boardwalk pass a few times. Marco told us all that he had put in his application to Cabrera's earlier that morning - that's where he'd been when I'd called to invite him to this lovely day of avian thievery.

And since I didn't want to talk about my mother-daughter shit, I instead brought up the fact that we were going to be hosting another Andalite. And unlike Elfangor, Aximili was unlikely to be planning missions and more likely to be sitting and waiting for the Andalite fleet to pick him up. Nothing productive came out of that conversation. Marco made jokes about some federal agent tracking down campers in the Moore Creek Preserve only to stumble on five kids and their telepathic pet alien. Tobias started making a veritable shopping list of off-grid essentials.

And before we knew it, some of the mechanics were ducking out to get lunch and we figured it was time to yet again reset our morph clock. We were trying to morph at ninety-minute intervals just to keep a safe buffer on our morph time.

Finally, another mechanic went up to the mezzanine to see Greg. This guy was big, beefy, and bald. He had a face like a bulldog and something of a terse disposition. Not aggressive, really, just a little surly, I guess. The kind of attitude that said leave me alone and I'll leave you alone. Like he wore all the charisma of a rattlesnake.

‹Who's that?› I asked.

‹Oh, that's Pug. He is some piece of work, but he's a high earner. He should be getting a fat roll here.›

Pug and Greg exchanged few pleasantries, and Greg tossed him a padded yellow envelope. Greg folded it over and tucked it into the waist of his jeans under his shirt.

Pug left as soon as he was paid, and I think the reason Greg spaced the illicit payments was so that no one got suspicious of a bunch of mechanics coming and going, but I could be wrong on that. Anyway, Pug crawled into a beaten hulk of an older model Ford pickup and drove off, not aware of the three ravens that followed behind him.

We had the same concerns as before that maybe he'd deposit the cash or spend it, but just like with Duncan, Pug went straight home. He lived in a small rundown old house toward the edge of town, and the first thing he did was grab a six pack of cheap beer out of the fridge. He turned on the TV, and for a shit place, he had a good TV. He flipped through channels for a bit and drained a beer. He landed on Maury and opened another can. Then when the commercial came on, he opened another. He was finishing the last can when the show ended, and I knew we were getting tight on our morph time. We probably had about twenty minutes total before we had to demorph.

Pug collapsed into the couch like he'd been shot with a rhino tranquilizer. Apparently when you drain six tall boys in an hour, the next step is almost always nap time.

We flew into the open window on the second floor and while we probably should have had a look around or something first, I didn't think Pug was the type to have a wife. He seemed more the type that paid girlfriends by the hour. So I didn't think anything of demorphing in his house.

The first thought to enter my head when I was human was that I was a high school girl dressed in nothing more than volleyball shorts and a cami while a man I was sure had a rolodex worth of cheap hookers in his phone slept downstairs. And the next thing I processed were the smells. Birds just don't really do much as far as smells. Vultures do, but for the most part, birds can't smell anything. The house was old, and it reeked of dust and cobwebs. It was the kind of house were you just assume there are mice under the floorboards.

Half-dressed or not, it was going to be easier to steal money off the sleeping brute as a human than a bird. And there was always grizzly if it came to that.

Marco was in his orange and black wetsuit - probably because he'd been at Cabrera's - and Tobias was in just his boxer briefs. I was thankful we were all a reasonably close group prior to being Animorphs. "Don't stare at my ass," I whispered to the boys as we tiptoed down the creaking wooden stairs.

"I value my fingers, thank you," Marco whispered back.

Pug stank like beer, steel, and engine grease, and he snored like a wasted no time and gently rolled the big guy over so far as he could. It became apparent that he wasn't strong enough to roll him over and still reach for the envelope. I reached for the envelope and three things happened in very quick succession.

The first is that Pug grabbed my wrist. Mostly passed out and obviously very drunk, his eyes were open and staring at me, but I honestly doubt he could see me. Tobias, standing right behind him behind the old sofa, reached out and grabbed pug at the neck. Pug's eyes rolled back in his head and it was clear that Tobias had just acquired the bastard. And thirdly, as Pug once again collapsed into unconsciousness, the envelope remained in my hand as he melted back into the sofa, then rolled down to the floor.

He was breathing, but he was the next best thing to being dead at that point. We just left him there. I personally didn't care if he actually was dead, and Marco would have needed to morph to gorilla to move him.

Upstairs, I opened the envelope and took out the fat roll of cash.

"How much is there?" Marco asked.

I unrolled it and started counting. It was nearly all fifties and twenties, and it didn't take long for me to realize there was more than five hundred dollars in my hand.

"Fuck me," I said without thinking, "There's more than six grand here."


End file.
